History > 2011 > USA > War > Afghanistan (II)

U.S. soldiers from the 234th Infantry Division in Fort Riley, Kansas

travel to Afghanistan April 15.

Vyaceslav Oseledko/AFP/Getty Images

Boston Globe > Big Picture > Afghanistan, April 2011        6 May 2011

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/05/afghanistan_april_2011.html

Copter Downed by Taliban Fire;

Elite U.S. Unit Among Dead

August 6, 2011
The New York Times
By RAY RIVERA,
ALISSA J. RUBIN and THOM SHANKER

This article is by Ray Rivera,
Alissa J. Rubin and Thom Shanker.

KABUL, Afghanistan — In the deadliest day for American forces in the nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan, insurgents shot down a Chinook transport helicopter on Saturday, killing 30 Americans, including some Navy Seal commandos from the unit that killed Osama bin Laden, as well as 8 Afghans, American and Afghan officials said.

The helicopter, on a night-raid mission in the Tangi Valley of Wardak Province, to the west of Kabul, was most likely brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade, one coalition official said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, and they could hardly have found a more valuable target: American officials said that 22 of the dead were Navy Seal commandos, including members of Seal Team 6. Other commandos from that team conducted the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Bin Laden in May. The officials said that those who were killed Saturday were not involved in the Pakistan mission.

Saturday’s attack came during a surge of violence that has accompanied the beginning of a drawdown of American and NATO troops, and it showed how deeply entrenched the insurgency remains even far from its main strongholds in southern Afghanistan and along the Afghan-Pakistani border in the east. American soldiers had recently turned over the sole combat outpost in the Tangi Valley to Afghans.

Gen. Abdul Qayum Baqizoy, the police chief of Wardak, said the attack occurred around 1 a.m. Saturday after an assault on a Taliban compound in the village of Jaw-e-Mekh Zareen in the Tangi Valley. The fighting lasted at least two hours, the general said.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, confirmed that insurgents had been gathering at the compound, adding that eight of them had been killed in the fighting.

President Obama offered his condolences to the families of the Americans and Afghans who died in the attack. “Their death is a re-minder of the extraordinary sacrifice made by the men and women of our military and their families,” Mr. Obama said. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan also offered his sympathies.

Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of the international military mission in Afghanistan, said: “All of those killed in this operation were true heroes who had already given so much in the defense of freedom. Their sacrifice will not be forgotten.”

The Tangi Valley traverses the border between Wardak and Logar Province, an area where security has worsened over the past two years, bringing the insurgency closer to the capital, Kabul. It is one of several inaccessible areas that have become havens for insurgents, according to operations and intelligence officers with the Fourth Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, which patrols the area. The mountainous region, with its steeply pitched hillsides and arid shale, laced by small footpaths and byways, has long been an area that the Taliban have used to move between Logar and Wardak, local officials said.

Officers at a forward operating base near the valley described Tangi as one of the most troubled areas in Logar and Wardak Provinces. “There’s a lot happening in Tangi,” said Capt. Kirstin Massey, 31, the assistant intelligence officer for Fourth Brigade Combat Team in an interview last week. “It’s a stronghold for the Taliban.”

The fighters are entirely Afghans and almost all local residents, Captain Massey said, noting that “We don’t capture any fighters who are non-Afghans.”

The redoubts in these areas pose the kind of problems the military faced last year in similarly remote areas of Kunar Province, forcing commanders to weigh the mission’s value given the cost in soldiers’ lives and dollars spent in places where the vast majority of the insurgents are local residents who resent both the NATO presence and the Afghan government.

The dilemma is that if NATO military forces do not stay, the areas often quickly slip back under Taliban influence, if not outright control, and the Afghan National Security Forces do not have the ability yet to rout them.

When the Fourth Brigade Combat Team handed over its only combat outpost in the Tangi Valley to Afghan security forces in April, the American commander for the area said that as troops began to withdraw, he wanted to focus his forces on troubled areas that had larger populations. But he pledged that coalition forces would continue to carry out raids there to stem insurgent activity.

“As we lose U.S. personnel, we have to concentrate on the greater populations,” said Lt. Col. Thomas S. Rickard, the commander of 10th Mountain Division’s Task Force Warrior, which has responsibility for the area that includes Tangi. “We are going to continue to hunt insurgents in Tangi and prevent them from having a safe haven.”

Within days of the transition, the Taliban raised their flag near the outpost, said a NATO official familiar with the situation. Afghan security forces remained in the area but were no match for the Taliban, the official said.

Local officials in Wardak said that residents of the Tangi Valley disliked the fighting in the area, and that though they had fallen under the Taliban’s sway, the residents were not willing allies.

“They do not like having military in that area — no matter whether they are Taliban or foreigners,” said Hajji Mohammad Hazrat Janan, the chairman of the Wardak provincial council. “When an operation takes place in their village,” he said, “their sleep gets disrupted by the noise of helicopters and by their military operation. And also they don’t like the Taliban, because when they attack, then they go and seek cover in their village, and they are threatened by the Taliban.”

However, when local residents are hurt by the NATO soldiers, then, he said, they are willing to help the insurgents.

This was the second helicopter to be shot down by insurgents in the past two weeks. On July 25, a Chinook was shot down in Kunar Province, injuring two people on board. Of 15 crashes or forced landings this year, those two were the only confirmed cases where hostile fire was involved.

Before Saturday, the biggest single-day loss of life for the American military in Afghanistan came on June 28, 2005, during an operation in Kunar Province when a Chinook helicopter carrying Special Operations troops was shot down as it tried to provide reinforcements to forces trapped in heavy fighting. Sixteen members of a Special Operations unit were killed in the crash, and three more were killed in fighting on the ground.

Although the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan has steadily risen in the past year, with a 15 percent increase in the first half of 2011 over the same period last year, NATO deaths had been declining — decreasing nearly 20 percent in the first six months of 2011 compared with 2010.

 

Ray Rivera and Alissa J. Rubin reported from Kabul, and Thom Shanker from Washington. Jack Healy, Abdul Waheed Wafa and Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul.

    Copter Downed by Taliban Fire; Elite U.S. Unit Among Dead, NYT, 6.8.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/world/asia/07afghanistan.html

U.S. drawdown begins in Afghanistan

KABUL | Fri Jul 15, 2011
9:30am EDT
Reuters

KABUL (Reuters) - The first U.S. troops have left Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama's planned drawdown of about a third of the 100,000 U.S. forces there during the next year.

Facing growing political opposition to the nearly decade-old war, Obama announced in June the withdrawal plan, which was a faster timetable than the military had recommended.

The first 10,000 troops will come home by the end of the year, but Obama left the details up to his commanders.

U.S. Lt. Col. Wayne Perry, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said about 650 troops who had completed their rotation in Afghanistan left on Wednesday as scheduled, and would not be replaced.

"As part of the drawdown the first U.S. troops have left Afghanistan," he said.

The units that left were the Army National Guard's 1st Squadron, 134th Cavalry Regiment, based in Kabul, and the Army National Guard's 1st Squadron, 113th Cavalry Regiment, which had been in neighboring Parwan province.

Afghan security forces are to take over security responsibility from foreign forces in seven areas of the country this summer. Afghan forces will then take the lead in securing the entire country by the end of 2014.

Critics have said Obama's decision to bring troops home from Afghanistan faster than the military recommended could jeopardize the next major push of the war, to unseat insurgents in the east.

The drawdown comes amid intense fighting in Afghanistan, where more than 1,500 U.S. forces have been killed since the war began.

Although extra U.S. troops ordered into southern Afghanistan have made security gains there, the situation in the east of the country bordering Pakistan has deteriorated.

Late last month, insurgents staged a brazen raid on the Kabul Intercontinental hotel, killing 12 people and raising fresh questions about whether Afghan forces are ready to assume responsibilities as U.S. forces pull out.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols;

Editing by Jonathon Burch and Daniel Magnowski)

    U.S. drawdown begins in Afghanistan, R, 15.7.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/15/us-usa-afghanistan-drawdown-idUSTRE76E26B20110715

As U.S. wars wind down,

drones gain new prominence

WASHINGTON | Fri Jul 15, 2011
1:13am EDT
Reuters
By Warren Strobel and Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In many ways, it's the perfect weapon for a war-weary nation that suddenly finds itself on a tight budget.

Missile-armed drones are playing a greater role than ever in U.S. counter-terror operations, as President Barack Obama winds down land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Washington's focus expands to militant havens such as Somalia and Yemen where there are no U.S. troops permanently on the ground.

The CIA now operates Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft, armed with Hellfire missiles, over at least five countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya.

The agency does not publicly acknowledge the program. The U.S. military uses drones, primarily for surveillance, in Iraq and elsewhere.

And there's every likelihood the use of drones to attack suspected anti-U.S. militants will spread further, current and former U.S. officials told Reuters.

"The CIA's role could very well expand over the coming years as the government deals with emerging terrorist threats," said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In the latest strikes, at least 48 militants were reported killed in drone attacks Monday and Tuesday in Pakistan's tribal regions.

That brought to about 260 the number of drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, including nearly 50 this year, according to a tally kept by the New America Foundation think tank.

By far most of those drone strikes, more than 225, came after July 2008, when the United States decided on a more aggressive and unilateral pursuit of militants in Pakistan, a U.S. official said.

Analysts and former U.S. intelligence officials generally approve of the increasing reliance on drones, but warn they are not without drawbacks. Those include civilian casualties, resentment of America's warfare-from-a-distance in Pakistan and elsewhere -- and the likelihood the technology will be turned against the United States some day, they said.

"We currently have a monopoly, or effective monopoly, on armed drones," said John Nagl, a retired U.S. Army officer and president of the Center for a New American Security think tank. "This technology will spread, and it will be used against us in years to come."

 

COUNTER-INSURGENCY ON THE WANE?

The use of drones -- remotely piloted aircraft -- against militants began in the years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, was ramped up in President George W. Bush's final year in office and has been embraced enthusiastically by Obama.

"When threatened, we must respond with force -- but when that force can be targeted, we need not deploy large land armies overseas," Obama declared in a June 22 speech announcing a faster-than-expected withdrawal of the troops he surged into Afghanistan last year.

Obama's speech appeared to signal the end of the era of large-scale counter-insurgency campaigns, championed by a cadre of officers that included Nagl, involving tens of thousands of U.S. and allied troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The troops did more than fight. They protected civilian populations, built schools and roads, trained armies and police forces.

The White House's new counter-terrorism strategy emphasizes a lighter footprint, as advocated by Vice President Joe Biden. Combat brigades are being replaced by Special Forces strike teams, capture-and-interrogate operations -- and drones.

A senior U.S. official said Obama has made no "strategic shift" to favor using drone strikes.

"There are probably some times when they are the most appropriate tool given the nature of the target you may be going after, and there are other times when they won't be," said the official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name.

Indeed, Obama rejected an option for a drone strike to kill al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in early May, sending in a Navy SEAL team instead. In April, he authorized yet another approach, capturing a leader of the Somali militant group al Shabaab, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, at sea and interrogating him for two months before transferring him to a U.S. prison.

Still, the official acknowledged that drones are an attractive option outside declared theaters of war, where "you want to be even more discriminating and more careful in your application" of deadly force.

That, analysts say, is precisely where the militant threat is moving, as al Qaeda's core group declines relative to affiliates like al Shabaab and Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

As the Iraq war winds down, more drones equipped for intelligence gathering and other purposes have been freed up, the senior official said. The overall U.S. drone arsenal has also increased. "It's something that in some ways is a natural evolution: as you have more assets to draw on, you tend to use them more," he said.

 

KILL OR CAPTURE

Paul Pillar, a Georgetown University professor and former top CIA analyst, said drones are a "more effective and better focused way" of using military force against militants.

"But ... we must bear in mind as we make each individual decision about a drone strike that the immediate positive results always have to be weighed against the potentially longer-term consequences, given how it's perceived and possible resentment," he said.

Former U.S. intelligence officials said one downside to drone strikes is the loss of potential intelligence from interrogating a suspect or finding telltale "pocket litter."

The senior U.S. official called that a false choice -- capture often isn't an option -- and also rejected criticism of civilian casualties. Drones, he said, are often more precise than other counter-terrorism weapons.

Innocent bystanders have frequently been killed in drone strikes, but such deaths appear to have dropped dramatically in recent years.

A source familiar with the program said about 30 noncombatants and 1,400 militants have been killed in Pakistan since Bush expanded drone use in July 2008. The New America Foundation analysis found the "non-militant fatality rate" dropped from about 20 percent in 2004 to 5 percent last year.

Nagl credited former defense secretary Robert Gates and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, with pushing hard for better links between intelligence gathering and drone operators, resulting in more accurate strikes -- and fewer civilian casualties.

While counter-insurgency may be out of favor now, Nagl -- who emphasized that he did not back the 2003 Iraq invasion -- said the United States should not jettison those skills. "We may be done with counter-insurgency, but insurgency may not be done with us."

Both the Predator and Reaper drones are produced by the privately held General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., based in San Diego, California.

 

(Editing by Todd Eastham)

    As U.S. wars wind down, drones gain new prominence, R, 15.7.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/15/us-usa-war-drones-idUSTRE76E0RT20110715

To Track Militants,

U.S. Has System

That Never Forgets a Face

July 13, 2011
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — When the Taliban dug an elaborate tunnel system beneath the largest prison in southern Afghanistan this spring, they set off a scramble to catch the 475 inmates who escaped.

One thing made it easier. Just a month before the April jailbreak, Afghan officials, using technology provided by the United States, recorded eye scans, fingerprints and facial images of each militant and criminal detainee in the giant Sarposa Prison.

Within days of the breakout, about 35 escapees were recaptured at internal checkpoints and border crossings; they were returned to prison after their identities were confirmed by biometric files.

One escapee was seized during a routine traffic stop less than two miles from his home village. Another was recaptured at a local recruiting station where he was trying to infiltrate Afghan security forces.

With little notice and only occasional complaints, the American military and local authorities have been engaged in an ambitious effort to record biometric identifying information on a remarkable number of people in Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly men of fighting age.

Information about more than 1.5 million Afghans has been put in databases operated by American, NATO and local forces. While that is one of every 20 Afghan residents, it is the equivalent of roughly one of every six males of fighting age, ages 15 to 64.

In Iraq, an even larger number of people, and a larger percentage of the population, have been registered. Data have been gathered on roughly 2.2 million Iraqis, or one in every 14 citizens — and the equivalent of one in four males of fighting age.

To get the information, soldiers and police officers take digital scans of eyes, photographs of the face, and fingerprints. In Iraq and Afghanistan, all detainees and prisoners must submit to such scrutiny. But so do local residents who apply for a government job, in particular those with the security forces and the police and at American installations. A citizen in Afghanistan or Iraq would almost have to spend every minute in a home village and never seek government services to avoid ever crossing paths with a biometric system.

What is different from traditional fingerprinting is that the government can scan through millions of digital files in a matter of seconds, even at remote checkpoints, using hand-held devices distributed widely across the security forces.

While the systems are attractive to American law enforcement agencies, there is serious legal and political opposition to imposing routine collection on American citizens.

Various federal, state and local law enforcement agencies have discussed biometric scanning, and many have even spent money on hand-held devices. But the proposed uses are much more limited, with questions being raised about constitutional rights of privacy and protection from warrantless searches.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, there are some complaints — but rarely on grounds recognizable to Americans as civil liberties issues.

Afghanistan, in particular, is a nation with no legacy of birth certificates, driver’s licenses or social security numbers, and where there is a thriving black market in forged national identity papers. Some Afghans are concerned that in the future the growing biometric database could be abused as a weapon of ethnic, tribal or political retaliation — a census of any particular group’s adversaries. Even Afghan officials who support the program want to take it over themselves, and not have the Americans do it.

“To be sure, there must be sound and responsible policies and oversight regarding enrollment and the storage, use and sharing of private individual data,” said Brig. Gen. Mark S. Martins, commander of the military’s new Rule of Law Field Force in Afghanistan.

But he stressed that biometric systems “can combat fraud and corruption, place law enforcement on a sounder evidentiary footing, and greatly improve security.”

Instant, computerized iris scans as a tool of population control used to be the monopoly of science fiction films. Even real-world use of biometric identification technologies overseas was for years reserved for the intelligence agencies and the military’s elite hunter-killer commando units.

But a new generation of hand-held biometric systems has spread across the military.

“You can present a fake identification card,” said Sgt. Maj. Robert Haemmerle of the Combined Joint Interagency Task Force 435. “You can shave your beard off. But you can’t change your biometrics.” The task force conducts detention, judicial and biometrics operations — responsibilities that will be turned over to the Afghan government.

Defense Department spending on biometrics programs is enormous, set at $3.5 billion for the 2007 through 2015 fiscal years, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The concept of expanding biometrics for wholesale application on the battlefield was first tested in 2004 by Marine Corps units in Falluja, a militant stronghold in Anbar Province, Iraq. The insurgent safe haven was walled off, and only those who submitted to biometrics were allowed in and out.

In late 2004, when an Iraqi militant was allowed on to an American base in Mosul, where he detonated a suicide vest and killed 22 in a dining tent, commanders ordered a stringent identification program for Iraqi and third-country citizens entering American facilities.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, reviewing these efforts when he took command in Iraq in 2007, ordered a surge of biometric scans across the war zone to match the increase in American troops.

General Petraeus lauds the technology, not only for separating insurgents from the population in which they seek to hide, but also for cracking cells that build and plant roadside bombs, the greatest killer of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fingerprints and other forensic tidbits can be lifted from a defused bomb or from remnants after a blast, and compared with the biometric files on former detainees and suspected or known militants.

“This data is virtually irrefutable and generally is very helpful in identifying who was responsible for a particular device in a particular attack, enabling subsequent targeting,” said General Petraeus, who will soon retire as commander in Afghanistan to become director of central intelligence. “Based on our experience in Iraq, I pushed this hard here in Afghanistan, too, and the Afghan authorities have recognized the value and embraced the systems.”

Military officials acknowledge that the new systems fielded by American, coalition and Afghan units do not all speak to one another. The hand-held devices fail in the awesome heat of the Afghan summer. Screens break when dropped. But a significant challenge in spreading biometric devices among an illiterate Afghan security force was resolved when the operating system was changed from English to an easy-to-teach system of color-coded commands.

    To Track Militants, U.S. Has System That Never Forgets a Face, R, 13.7.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/world/asia/14identity.html

Struggling for Power in Afghanistan

July 5, 2011
The New York Times
By GLENN ZORPETTE

THE Western campaign for hearts and minds in Afghanistan is based heavily on providing roads, dams, buildings and, especially, electricity. The United States Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D., expects to spend $2.1 billion this year in Afghanistan. It has been working there for half a century, since the Soviets and Americans were competing to be the country’s development partners.

So you’d think that a new five-year, $1.2 billion program that U.S.A.I.D. has proposed to create a modern electrical grid there would be a model. You’d be quite wrong.

When it comes to electricity, the agency has a dismal record, one that needs to be reviewed now, before the grid plan moves ahead. Afghanistan is in the bottom 10 percent of the world in electricity consumption per capita; if recent patterns hold, it will stay there as U.S.A.I.D. and the State Department try to appease the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and also give American officials a veneer of victory over Afghanistan’s problems as American troops start to withdraw. President Obama’s desire to speed the withdrawal makes the issue more urgent.

As in Iraq, the main American electrical reconstruction effort in Afghanistan is divided between U.S.A.I.D. and the Army Corps of Engineers. Of the two, the Corps has proved far more efficient.

The biggest project until now has been a 105-megawatt diesel power plant at Tarakhil, outside Kabul. It took the aid agency nearly three years to get it built. And as documented by the reporters Pratap Chatterjee of the CorpWatch news service and Marisa Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers, the Kabul plant became emblematic of the agency’s struggles.

Its contractors were the Louis Berger Group and Black & Veatch. Last year, U.S.A.I.D.’s inspector general said delays and contracting problems at the project had cost nearly $40 million, out of a total outlay of more than $300 million.

The agency itself had criticized Black & Veatch in letters to the company and in performance reports. So analysts who followed the contracting — including academics, lawyers, legislators and journalists — were stunned last October when U.S.A.I.D. offered Black & Veatch a $266 million contract, without competitive bidding, for other electrical projects in Afghanistan. The agency has cited the special challenges of war-zone work.

And in the end, the Kabul plant most often has sat idle, as it supplements power from abroad. Current prices for diesel fuel trucked into a war zone have driven its operating costs to around 40 cents per kilowatt-hour, seven times the 6 cents that a kilowatt-hour imported over transmission lines from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan or Tajikistan costs.

Another U.S.A.I.D. failure was at the Shorandam Industrial Park, near the city of Kandahar, which I visited with American military engineers in April. In 2005, U.S.A.I.D. set out to install 10 diesel generators able to produce 6.6 megawatts together. But it had a dispute with its initial contractor about costs and later said the generators had been damaged by an improvised explosive device.

After the generators sat in storage for five years, the agency contracted with Black & Veatch to finally install them; now the agency hopes to get the facility running this month. Meanwhile, the Corps of Engineers contracted for a 10-megawatt facility on the same site last July; it went into full operation on Dec. 2.

Why have two American agencies planned two different diesel-generating facilities in the same location, but with different transformers, switches, contractors and manufacturers? That’s a good question — one of many I couldn’t get a sensible answer to in the three weeks I spent in Afghanistan reporting for my magazine on the projects.

Now U.S.A.I.D. is about to start its five-year initiative to rebuild, improve, expand and tie together Afghanistan’s decrepit electrical networks into a single modern grid. It’s an excellent idea, but the agency and the Afghan national utility are not up to the challenge.

In an annex to a U.S.A.I.D. report, dated March 5 and given to me in Afghanistan, the agency outlines a nine-part mechanism for contracting and financing the many projects. It indicates its intention to put the national utility in overall charge, with the agency as a sort of supervisor and intermediary with the Afghan Finance Ministry. Just last week at a briefing in Washington, the utility’s chief executive officer, Abdul Razique Samadi, enthusiastically looked forward to getting to work on the project.

According to the March 5 outline of the project, the utility would control $906 million to be issued over five years — most of the budget. But that makes no sense. The utility has no experience with large-scale international contracting work, and most of its existing grids are ancient. No technical specialist outside of U.S.A.I.D. with whom I spoke in Afghanistan thinks the utility can direct and monitor the work of perhaps dozens of Western contractors and subcontractors. “It’s almost like we’re setting them up for failure,” one development official told me.

Why is U.S.A.I.D. pushing this scheme? It is under intense pressure from two sides: from its State Department overseers, who want to show progress before the troop pullouts are well under way, and from President Karzai, who wants more control over development funds and activities. Giving the utility and the Afghan Finance Ministry control of this project could satisfy both parties, at least on paper.

At its core, the problem isn’t the utility’s inadequacy; it is U.S.A.I.D.’s. The agency has shown an inability to manage large electrical projects. Its programs change with the policy goals of the American administrations it serves, and it seems to lack officials in Afghanistan who arrived with prior experience in electrical projects and contracting.

What to do? Turn the projects over to the Army Corps of Engineers. It has performed better than U.S.A.I.D. on electrical projects in Afghanistan; it is less hobbled by politics; it has experienced engineers. It’s critical that this happen soon, because the Corps can expect to be withdrawn with the rest of the Army, even if the timetable isn’t set.

Yes, a transfer of responsibility would upset the delicate war-zone power balance between the State and Defense Departments. And the military isn’t supposed to do long-term development overseas. But weigh those objections against the record: U.S.A.I.D.’s performance in Afghanistan’s electrical sector has been so poor for so long that we can expect many millions of dollars to be wasted unless the administration acts now to give a vast new project a better chance of succeeding before only the aid agency is left in Afghanistan to struggle with the job.

 

Glenn Zorpette is the executive editor of I.E.E.E. Spectrum,
the magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

    Struggling for Power in Afghanistan, NYT, 5.7.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/opinion/06zorpette.html

Let’s Not Linger in Afghanistan

July 4, 2011
The New York Times
By JEFF MERKLEY,
RAND PAUL and TOM UDALL

LAST month President Obama announced plans for withdrawing by next summer the approximately 30,000 American troops sent to Afghanistan as part of the 2009 surge.

We commend the president for sticking to the July date he had outlined for beginning the withdrawal. However, his plan would not remove all regular combat troops until 2014. We believe the United States is capable of achieving this goal by the end of 2012. America would be more secure and stronger economically if we recognized that we have largely achieved our objectives in Afghanistan and moved aggressively to bring our troops and tax dollars home.

After Al Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, we rightly sought to bring to justice those who attacked us, to eliminate Al Qaeda’s safe havens and training camps in Afghanistan, and to remove the terrorist-allied Taliban government. With hard work and sacrifice, our troops, intelligence personnel and diplomatic corps have skillfully achieved these objectives, culminating in the death of Osama bin Laden.

But over the past 10 years, our mission expanded to include a fourth goal: nation-building. That is what we are bogged down in now: a prolonged effort to create a strong central government, a national police force and an army, and civic institutions in a nation that never had any to begin with. Let’s not forget that Afghanistan has been a tribal society for millenniums.

Nineteen months ago the president announced the surge strategy in hopes of stabilizing Afghanistan and strengthening its military and police forces. Today, despite vast investment in training and equipping Afghan forces, the country’s deep-seated instability, rampant corruption and, in some cases, compromised loyalties endure. Extending our commitment of combat troops will not remedy that situation.

Sometimes our national security warrants extreme sacrifices, and our troops are prepared to make them when asked. In this case, however, there is little reason to believe that the continuing commitment of tens of thousands of troops on a sprawling nation-building mission in Afghanistan will make America safer.

National security experts, including the former C.I.A. director Leon E. Panetta, have noted that Al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan has been greatly diminished. Today there are probably fewer than 100 low-level Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has a much larger presence in a number of other nations.

Our focus shouldn’t be establishing new institutions in Afghanistan, but concentrating on terrorist organizations with global reach. And our military and intelligence organizations have proved repeatedly that they can take the fight to the terrorists without a huge military footprint.

We have urgent needs at home: high unemployment and a flood of foreclosures, a record deficit and a debt that is over $14 trillion and growing. We are spending $10 billion a month in Afghanistan. We need to change course.

A week before the president’s speech, 24 of our Senate colleagues joined us by signing onto a bipartisan letter urging the president to announce a sustained and sizable drawdown from Afghanistan with the goal of removing regular combat troops. This group includes progressives, moderates and conservatives united behind one conclusion: we’ve accomplished what we set out to accomplish in Afghanistan, and we can no longer afford the lives and money it is taking to pursue an ambitious open-ended nation-building mission.

It is not too late to change course in what has become the longest American war in history. In light of our considerable national needs, both security and domestic, we urge the president to bring our troops home at last.

Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, and Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, are United States senators.

    Let’s Not Linger in Afghanistan, NYT, 4.7.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/opinion/05merkley3.html

Border shelling overshadows U.S.

Pakistan-Afghan talks

KABUL/ISLAMABAD | Mon Jun 27, 2011
1:08pm EDT
Reuters
By Alistair Scrutton and Myra MacDonald

KABUL/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Fighting across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border will overshadow talks when the two countries meet along with the United States on Tuesday to map out plans for reconciliation with the Taliban.

Pakistan on Monday rejected Afghan allegations it had fired 470 rockets into Afghanistan over the past three weeks, saying only that "a few accidental rounds" may have crossed the border when it pursued militants who had attacked its security forces.

But the escalation of fighting on the border between Pakistan's ethnic Pashtun tribal areas and Afghanistan has underscored the difficulties the three countries face in working together to reach a political settlement to the 10-year Afghan war.

"I think the main thing on the agenda this time may be the situation on the border," said Waheed Mujhda, political analyst at the Afghan Analytical and Advisory Center in Kabul.

The meeting, between U.S. envoy Marc Grossman and top diplomats from Afghanistan and Pakistan, follows President Barack Obama's announcement last week of a faster-than-expected troop withdrawal, accompanied by talks with the Taliban.

"It's a way to coordinate efforts on reconciliation but also a way for Afghanistan and the U.S. to state clearly to the government of Pakistan ... to end the support by Pakistan of safe havens," Grossman told a news conference.

Pakistan blames Afghanistan for giving refuge to militants on its side of the border, particularly in eastern Kunar province, leaving it vulnerable to counter-attack when it chases them out of its own tribal areas.

Top military commanders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States met in Kabul on Monday to review the situation on the border, a Pakistan army statement said.

Generals Ashfaq Kayani, Sher Mohammad Karimi and David Petraeus looked at ways of improving the effectiveness of operations, the statement said.

"Steps for better coordination and enhanced cooperation to avoid misunderstandings as regard to the border security were also discussed," it said.

Pakistan, badly bruised after U.S. forces found and killed Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad on May 2, is keen to show it has a constructive role to play in helping the United States to bring stability to Afghanistan.

It has long wanted the United States to hold talks with the Taliban to seek a political settlement to the Afghan conflict which it says is fuelling its own domestic Islamist insurgency.

The United States has come some way toward sharing that view, opening its own preliminary talks with the Taliban.

It has also softened its stance on talks by saying its demands that insurgents renounce violence, sever ties with al Qaeda and respect the Afghan constitution are outcomes rather than preconditions for negotiations -- a suggestion made last year by Pakistan.

"Strategically the two countries are on same page," a senior military official said last month. "There are issues on operational and tactical levels."

Karzai has also been pushing for reconciliation with the Taliban and for the first time in the 10-year war, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States all share -- in theory at least -- a commitment to seek a political settlement.

DISTRUST ON ALL SIDES

But deep distrust remains, both between the United States and Pakistan and between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pakistan has so far been excluded from Washington's early contacts with the Taliban, Grossman told a news conference in Kabul. "Up to now, the government of Pakistan has not been involved in that particular process at all, as yet."

Kabul accuses Pakistan of continuing to support the Afghan Taliban, whom it openly backed when they were in power from 1996 to 2001, to maintain its influence in Afghanistan.

It also says Islamabad is trying to manipulate peace talks to its advantage, to the point of sabotaging them if they do not go in the direction it wants.

"We expect practical steps from Pakistan in the weeks and months ahead to help sustain the peace process," a senior Afghan government official said. "The ball is in Pakistan's court."

With the Taliban talks still at a preliminary stage, and vulnerable to ethnic and regional rivalries which could plunge Afghanistan deeper into civil war as U.S. troops withdraw, the cross-border shelling has added another complication to a fragile situation.

The Afghan government said on Sunday that "it strongly condemned the firing of 470 rockets over the past three weeks from the Pakistan side of the border in the eastern provinces of Kunar and Nangahar provinces."

President Hamid Karzai expressed his deep concern, it said, and asked Pakistan to immediately stop firing into Afghanistan.

A spokesman for Karzai said on Monday Pakistan's ambassador to Kabul had been summoned over the issue, adding: "We are sure it can be resolved."

Pakistan army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said no rounds had been intentionally fired into Afghanistan.

In the last month, there had been five major attacks from the Afghan side of the border in which 55 men in the Pakistani security forces had been killed and 80 wounded. "The fleeing militants were engaged by the security forces and a few accidental rounds going across cannot be ruled out," he said.

Pakistan says militants, including Pakistani Taliban commanders, have taken refuge on the Afghan side after it launched military operations to drive them out of its Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

It was angered by a U.S. decision to thin out its troops in eastern Afghanistan, including the Korengal valley in Kunar province, when Washington decided to concentrate on population centres in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban heartland.

"For quite some time we have been highlighting that there are safe havens across the border," Abbas said. "Something should be done about these."

Before the killing of bin Laden, the United States had been talking about improving coordination of military operations on both sides of the border so that they could work with, rather than against, each other, in fighting insurgents.

That cooperation may have deteriorated in the breakdown of trust which followed the unilateral U.S. raid to get bin Laden, perhaps explaining the escalation in cross-border shelling.

It is impossible to verify independently exactly what is happening on the remote mountainous border.

(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider and Zeeshan Haider in Islamabad, Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

    Border shelling overshadows U.S.-Pakistan-Afghan talks, R, 27.6.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/27/us-pakistan-afghanistan-idUSTRE75Q15920110627

Afghanistan

is most dangerous country

for women

Wed Jun 15, 2011
12:56pm EDT
Reuters
By Lisa Anderson

LONDON, June 15 (TrustLaw) - Violence, dismal healthcare and brutal poverty make Afghanistan the world's most dangerous country for women, with Congo a close second due to horrific levels of rape, a Thomson Reuters Foundation expert poll said on Wednesday.

Pakistan, India and Somalia ranked third, fourth and fifth, respectively, in the global survey of perceptions of threats ranging from domestic abuse and economic discrimination to female feticide, genital mutilation and acid attacks.

"Ongoing conflict, NATO airstrikes and cultural practices combined make Afghanistan a very dangerous place for women," said Antonella Notari, head of Women Change Makers, a group that supports women social entrepreneurs around the world.

"In addition, women who do attempt to speak out or take on public roles that challenge ingrained gender stereotypes of what's acceptable for women to do or not, such as working as policewomen or news broadcasters, are often intimidated or killed."

The poll by TrustLaw (www.trust.org/trustlaw), a legal news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation, marked the launch of its new TrustLaw Women section, a global hub of news and information on women's legal rights.

TrustLaw asked 213 gender experts from five continents to rank countries by overall perceptions of danger as well as by six risks. The risks were health threats, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, cultural or religious factors, lack of access to resources and trafficking.

Some experts said the poll showed that subtle dangers such as discrimination that don't grab headlines are sometimes just as significant risks for women as bombs, bullets, stonings and systematic rape in conflict zones.

"I think you have to look at all the dangers to women, all the risks women and girls face," said Elisabeth Roesch, who works on gender-based violence for the International Rescue Committee in Washington.

"If a woman can't access healthcare because her healthcare isn't prioritized, that can be a very dangerous situation as well."

 

LITANY OF PERILS

Afghanistan emerged as the most dangerous country for women overall and worst in three of the six risk categories: health, non-sexual violence and lack of access to economic resources.

Respondents cited sky-high maternal mortality rates, limited access to doctors and a near total lack of economic rights. Afghan women have a one in 11 chance of dying in childbirth, according to UNICEF.

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), still reeling from a 1998-2003 war and accompanying humanitarian disaster that killed 5.4 million people, came second mainly due to staggering levels of sexual violence in the lawless east.

More than 400,000 women are raped in the country each year, according to a recent study by U.S. researchers. The United Nations has called Congo the rape capital of the world.

"Statistics from DRC are very revealing on this: ongoing war, use of rape as a weapon, recruitment of females as soldiers who are also used as sex slaves," said Clementina Cantoni, a Pakistan-based aid worker with ECHO, the European Commission's humanitarian aid department.

"The fact that the government is corrupt and that female rights are very low on the agenda means that there is little or no recourse to justice."

Rights activists say militia groups and soldiers target all ages, including girls as young as three and elderly women. They are gang-raped, raped with bayonets and have guns shot into their vaginas.

Pakistan ranked third largely on the basis of cultural, tribal and religious practices harmful to women. These include acid attacks, child and forced marriage and punishment or retribution by stoning or other physical abuse.

"Pakistan has some of the highest rates of dowry murder, so-called honor killings and early marriage," said Divya Bajpai, reproductive health advisor at the International HIV/AIDS Alliance.

Some 1,000 women and girls die in honor killings annually, according to Pakistan's Human Rights Commission.

 

TRAFFICKING

India ranked fourth primarily due to female foeticide, infanticide and human trafficking.

In 2009, India's then-Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta estimated that 100 million people, mostly women and girls, were involved in trafficking in India that year.

"The practice is common but lucrative so it goes untouched by government and police," said Cristi Hegranes, founder of the Global Press institute, which trains women in developing countries to be journalists.

India's Central Bureau of Investigation estimated that in 2009 about 90 percent of trafficking took place within the country and that there were some 3 million prostitutes, of which about 40 percent were children.

In addition to sex slavery, other forms of trafficking include forced labor and forced marriage, according to a U.S. State Department report on trafficking in 2010. The report also found slow progress in criminal prosecutions of traffickers.

Up to 50 million girls are thought to be "missing" over the past century due to female infanticide and foeticide, the U.N. Population Fund says.

Some experts said the world's largest democracy was relatively forthcoming about describing its problems, possibly casting it in a darker light than if other countries were equally transparent about trafficking.

Somalia ranked fifth due to a catalog of dangers including high maternal mortality, rape and female genital mutilation, along with limited access to education, healthcare and economic resources.

"I'm completely surprised because I thought Somalia would be first on the list, not fifth," Somali women's minister Maryan Qasim told TrustLaw.

"The most dangerous thing a woman in Somalia can do is to become pregnant. When a woman becomes pregnant her life is 50-50 because there is no antenatal care at all. There are no hospitals, no healthcare, no nothing.

"Add to that the rape cases that happen on a daily basis, the female genital mutilation that is being done to every single girl in Somalia. Add to that the famine and the drought. Add to that the fighting (which means) you can die any minute, any day."

Poll respondents included aid professionals, academics, health workers, policymakers, journalists and development specialists.

 

(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

    Afghanistan is most dangerous country for women, R, 15.6.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/15/us-women-danger-idUSTRE75E31R20110615

How will Afghan women fare

in Taliban reconciliation?

KABUL | Mon Jun 13, 2011
4:57am EDT
Reuters
By Amie Ferris-Rotman

KABUL (Reuters) - The gaggles of giggling schoolgirls in their black uniforms and flowing white hijabs seen across Afghanistan's cities have become symbolic of how far women's rights have come since the austere rule of the Taliban was toppled a decade ago.

While women have gained back basic rights in education, voting and work, considered un-Islamic by the Taliban, their plight remains severe and future uncertain as Afghan leaders seek to negotiate with the Taliban as part of their peace talks.

The United States and NATO, who have been fighting Taliban insurgents for 10 years in an increasingly unpopular war, have repeatedly stressed that any peace talks must abide by Afghanistan's constitution, which says the two sexes are equal.

But President Hamid Karzai's reticence on the matter, constant opposition by the Taliban, and setbacks even at the government level cast a shadow on the prospects of equality for the 15 million women who make up about half the population.

"I am not optimistic at all," said Suraya Parlika, 66, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and member of the upper house of the Afghan parliament. "We do not know the agenda of the talks and this worries all women in Afghanistan."

"Women are at risk of losing everything they have regained," she told Reuters in her office at the All Afghan Women's Union, the country's most prominent women's rights group that she set up 20 years ago.

The dangerous business of fighting for women's rights in Afghanistan highlights just how precarious their situation is.

Parlika said Taliban militants have tried to kill her eight times. In the latest attempt, gunmen tried to shoot her through a window at her home but missed and blew a hole in the wall.

Others, such as the headmaster of a girls' school near Kabul, are not so lucky. He was gunned down by the Taliban last month for educating girls.

MIXED MESSAGES

Washington and NATO have backed Karzai's peace plan, which includes reintegrating mid-level Taliban fighters and reconciling with some leaders as well as talks.

One of the main conditions in the talks is that insurgents renounce al Qaeda. The Taliban have rejected any talks until all foreign troops have left the country.

U.S. President Barack Obama has said U.S. troops, who make up 100,000 out of around 150,000 foreign forces, will begin to come home gradually from July, with NATO eyeing a full handover of security responsibilities to the Afghans by the end of 2014.

"What they (women) fear is a power-sharing agreement between leaders that does not take their interests into account," said Martine van Bijlert, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network in Kabul.

"At the moment there is no one standing up as a guarantor of the process, no one who says it's really important this is done well. There are a lot of mixed messages," she told Reuters.

Some have accused Karzai of holding back on women's rights to curry political support in the more conservative sections of society. One example is his passing of a family law in 2009 that legalized marital rape for Shi'ites, who make up 15 percent of the population.

In March, Karzai sacked the deputy governor of southern Helmand province after two women performed without headscarves at a high-profile concert.

Parlika said physical attacks on female lawmakers, and internal pressure from their male counterparts not to press women's issues, mean their presence in government is more about symbolism than actual change.

"The situation surrounding women can get very dark indeed," said one Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"There are lots of challenges that need to be overcome and the international community must stay focused to make sure women are protected," said the official, an adviser in the talks.

RURAL VS. URBAN

Underlying the rights women have regained on paper since U.S.-backed forces overthrew the Taliban are the enormous social and economic hurdles they face in a country where more than 40 percent live below the poverty line.

Rights groups and Western officials warn of a "rural versus urban" split, saying the vast economic and religious divide means women in the countryside have not benefited from the end of Taliban rule and continue to live much as they did before.

Some warn this paves the way for women's rights being forgotten in the event of Taliban peace talks.

"Afghanistan is totally male-dominated, women suffer terribly, and this is worse in rural areas where they are economically dependent on men and where they cannot express their own will," Parlika said.

Ancient traditions such as 'baad', when a woman is given as compensation for crimes, are common in the countryside, where female illiteracy is over 90 percent and child marriages are still widespread despite being illegal.

In the Taliban strongholds of the south and east, many women still seek permission from a male relative to leave their homes, and the rule of law is upheld either by Taliban "courts" or by tribal elders, which almost always favor men.

For Hasina Aimaq, the manager of an eponymous fashion house sponsored by a non-governmental organization for women, finding seamstresses for her business in northern Baghlan province is a constant struggle.

"There are always problems with the father, always. They would even prefer them to beg than earn money from work as they think learning a skill is bad," Aimaq told Reuters next to a collection of high-heeled shoes with geometric silk patterns.

Aimaq said her 75 teenage female workers, who make velveteen purple jackets and delicate floral scarves, regularly receive written threats from the Taliban, urging them to quit working.

"They tell us to stay at home, but we will keep coming to work and keep sewing," she said, adjusting her navy blue hijab.

 

(Editing by Paul Tait and Miral Fahmy)

    How will Afghan women fare in Taliban reconciliation?, R, 13.6.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/13/us-afghanistan-women-idUSTRE75C1BB20110613

Q+A: Women's rights in Afghanistan

since the fall of the Taliban

KABUL | Mon Jun 13, 2011
4:57am EDT
Reuters
By Amie Ferris-Rotman

KABUL (Reuters) - Women have won hard-fought rights in Afghanistan since the austere rule of the Taliban was ended by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001.

But gains made in areas such as education, work and even dress code look shaky as the government plans peace talks that include negotiating with the Taliban. Below are some questions and answers about women's rights in Afghanistan today.

 

HOW BAD WAS IT FOR WOMEN UNDER TALIBAN RULE?

Rights groups and Western governments described the situation as one of the worst that the world had encountered for women at that time.

Education, the right to vote and almost all work were banned for women by the Taliban government as un-Islamic from 1996-2001. A sharia law also imposed harsh punishment for adultery, which almost always favored men.

The Taliban also enforced a strict dress code involving a head-to-toe burqa when women left their homes.

Restrictions on their movement were also enforced. Women were not allowed by law to walk around unless accompanied by a male relative or their husband. Even then, they were told to keep their movement outside the home to a minimum.

Edicts were passed by the Taliban that ordered women not to wear shoes that make noise, and to paint over the windows of street-level homes so women could not be seen.

From 1998, they were denied access to general hospitals.

The dire treatment of women was the main reason Western governments gave for refusing to recognize the Taliban government as legitimate. It also caused the amount of foreign financial aid Afghanistan received to shrink significantly.

Boys' education also suffered as many of their teachers were women.

 

HAVE WOMEN'S RIGHTS REALLY IMPROVED IN AFGHANISTAN?

Yes. With the fall of the Taliban, women regained many of the basic rights that had been denied them.

There have been significant improvements over the past decade, including a quota for women in the Afghan parliament that has reserved a quarter of its 249 seats for them.

President Hamid Karzai's interim cabinet after 2001 included a female vice-president and there are three female ministers after his 2009 re-election.

Still, some warn that having female politicians is more about symbolism than actual change.

Karzai has said he wants women to play a bigger role in the army and police force, where they are crucial for security checks and to guard against domestic violence in a society where the sexes are often separated.

But jobs and personal lives are still constricted by custom and law. A lot depends on where women live. Rights groups and Western officials have warned of a rural-urban divide and say corruption and poverty fuel lawlessness outside of cities, where people also tend to be more conservative.

In rural areas, women often have little or no access to education and justice is more often administered by tribal elders or Taliban "courts" than traditional courts.

Rights groups view the rule of law and economic dependence on men as the key issues for women's rights today.

IS PROGRESS THREATENED?

Women's rights face setbacks from the Taliban, poor security, a strengthening conservative faction and even the present government itself.

Aid groups warn girls' education is in danger because of poor security, lack of funds and inadequate teacher-training.

Attacks on their schools and teachers, such as last month's killing of the headmaster of a girls' school near Kabul by Taliban gunmen, highlight persistent opposition, as do Taliban threats against working women across many professions.

A family law passed by Karzai in 2009 sparked outcry from Western nations.

Designed to legalize minority Shi'ite family law, which is different from that of the majority Sunni population, it was drawn up in part by a conservative cleric and contains clauses saying a wife can be denied food by her husband if she does not satisfy him sexually, and that she must wear make-up if he desires.

It also contained some restrictions on women's freedom of movement, reminiscent of Taliban-era edicts.

Female politicians and local officials in Afghanistan have accused Karzai of repressing women's rights to win political support in the more conservative sections of society.

In March, Karzai sacked the deputy governor of southern Helmand province after two women performed without headscarves at a high-profile concert.

His own wife is almost entirely absent from public life.

 

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE?

The United States and NATO have repeatedly said reconciliation talks with the Taliban must contain guarantees that women's rights are protected.

However there is growing concern from analysts and Afghan women that their rights will be overlooked. Karzai has spoken little on the issue, cementing those fears.

(Sources: Reuters, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Ahmed Rashid's book "Taliban")

(Editing by Paul Tait and Daniel Magnowski)

    Q+A: Women's rights in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, R, 13.6.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/13/us-afghanistan-women-qanda-idUSTRE75C1BI20110613

Four NATO troops killed

by bomb in east Afghanistan:

coalition

KABUL | Sat Jun 4, 2011
6:11am EDT
Reuters

KABUL (Reuters) - Four service members from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) were killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, the coalition said, continuing a trend of rising violence in recent weeks.

ISAF gave no other details about the latest incident. Most of the ISAF troops serving in the hotly contested east, near the border with Pakistan, are Americans.

At least 220 foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan so far in 2011, 57 in May when the Taliban began their "spring offensive."

(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Paul Tait)

    Four NATO troops killed by bomb in east Afghanistan: coalition, R, 4.6.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/04/us-afghanistan-troops-idUSTRE7530SD20110604

NATO strike kills civilians,

Afghans say most were kids

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan | Mon May 30, 2011
7:20am EDT
Reuters
By Abdul Malek

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - An air strike by NATO-led troops in southern Afghanistan killed at least nine civilians, NATO and Afghan officials said on Sunday, and many of the victims were children.

It was one of the deadliest foreign assaults on civilians in Afghanistan in months.

The mistaken killing of civilians by foreign forces, usually during air strikes or night-time raids, is a major source of friction between President Hamid Karzai and his Western backers.

It has complicated efforts to win support from ordinary Afghans for an increasingly unpopular war.

The commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in southwestern Afghanistan apologized for the deaths of nine civilians, saying troops had unwittingly targeted a home because insurgents were using it as a base.

"Unfortunately, the compound the insurgents purposefully occupied was later discovered to house innocent civilians," Major General John Toolan said in a statement.

"While I know there is no price on human life we will ensure that we make amends with the families in accordance with Afghan culture," he added.

The governor of Helmand province, where the air strike was called in, said the bomb killed 14 civilians, two of them women and the remainder children. Bereaved relatives brought the bodies of young children to the provincial capital to protest.

ISAF did not give the ages of the civilians it said died.

Karzai condemned the latest case of civilian casualties from NATO air strikes, saying he had warned U.S. and NATO troops their "arbitrary and unnecessary operations" were killing innocent people "every day."

He said in a statement the incident in violent Helmand province in the south was "a big mistake."

"It shows that attention is not being paid," he said.

The White House shares Karzai's concerns over civilian casualties, and takes them very seriously, U.S. President Barack Obama's spokesman said after the air strike.

"WHY WAS MY HOUSE BOMBED?"

Both the Helmand governor and Toolan said coalition troops had come under fire -- and Toolan said one U.S. Marine was killed -- before they ordered the bombing of a compound where the insurgents had taken shelter.

The Helmand governor said in a statement that seven boys and five girls were among the dead and three other children wounded.

Bereaved male relatives cradled the bodies of several young children wrapped in bloody sheets and placed side to side, and brought them in the back of a truck to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, Reuters television pictures showed.

"My house was bombarded in the middle of the night and my children were killed ... the Taliban were far away from my home, why was my house bombed?" relative Noor Agha told Reuters.

The NATO air strike comes at a time of high anti-Western sentiment in Afghanistan and days after deadly protests by thousands of people against a night raid by NATO troops in which four people, including two women, were killed.

Twelve people were killed during those violent protests and clashes with police in Takhar and more than 80 wounded.

On Saturday, Karzai ordered the Defense Ministry to take control of night raids, saying Afghan troops should be carrying out the sensitive operations themselves.

Critics of the raids, carried out on houses suspected of harbouring insurgents, say they often lead to civilian casualties as ordinary people rush to defend their homes.

Under a plan agreed by NATO leaders, foreign troops will begin handing over security responsibilities to Afghan troops from July, with a plan to withdraw all combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Despite the presence of some 150,000 foreign troops, violence in Afghanistan last year reached its deadliest phase since U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001.

The Taliban this month announced the start of their "spring offensive," vowing to attack foreign and Afghan troops and government officials.

(Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Paul Tait/Maria Golovnina)

    NATO strike kills civilians, Afghans say most were kids, R, 30.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/30/us-afghanistan-civilians-idUSTRE74S0M720110530

Roadside bomb

kills eight U.S. troops in Afghanistan

KABUL | Thu May 26, 2011
Reuters
6:23pm EDT

KABUL (Reuters) - Eight U.S. troops were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan on Thursday in the deadliest single attack on foreign forces in a month, the U.S. military said.

Afghan violence has surged in recent weeks as Taliban-led insurgents ramped up their long-expected "spring offensive."

U.S. commanders had warned a surge in violence was likely, with militants hitting back after NATO-led forces claimed parts of the insurgency's southern stronghold over the last year.

Thursday's bomb was the worst individual attack on foreign troops since eight U.S. service personnel and a U.S. contractor were shot dead by an Afghan air force pilot at a military airport in Kabul on April 27.

The Pentagon and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan initially said seven troops were killed on Thursday, but later added that an eighth died.

Separately, another ISAF service member was killed earlier on Thursday when a helicopter crashed in eastern Afghanistan, the coalition said. The cause of that crash was under investigation.

The nearly decade-old war in Afghanistan is increasingly unpopular in the United States.

Of the roughly 2,480 foreign troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001, more than 1,580 have been U.S. nationals.

News of the latest killings came as lawmakers in Congress narrowly lost a vote that would have required President Barack Obama to start planning for an accelerated withdrawal.

Foreign troops are preparing to start a gradual reduction in forces from July, handing over lead security responsibility to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.

But critics of Obama's war strategy in Congress are calling for a faster drawdown, particularly in the wake of the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan.

Civilian and military casualties reached record levels in 2010, the worst year of the war since U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001.

A total of 711 foreign troops were killed last year and 2011 is expected to follow a similar pattern, with casualty tolls rising during the spring and summer.

Almost 200 foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan so far in 2011.

(Reporting by Paul Tait in Kabul and Phil Stewart in Washington;
Editing by Andrew Dobbie and Laura MacInnis)

    Roadside bomb kills eight U.S. troops in Afghanistan, R, 26.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/26/us-afghanistan-troops-bomb-us-idUSTRE74P7VT20110526

Twelve dead in protests

after two women killed in Afghan raid

TALOQAN, Afghanistan | Wed May 18, 2011
9:22am EDT
Reuters
By Mohammad Hamed

TALOQAN, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Twelve people were killed and 80 wounded in violent protests Wednesday against the killing of two men and two women, accused of being insurgents, in a night-time raid by foreign troops in north Afghanistan, Afghan officials said.

Hundreds of angry demonstrators armed with spades and axes took to the streets of Taloqan, a normally peaceful town in Takhar province, chanting "death to America" and tried to storm a foreign military base nearby.

Local police and residents said the four people killed in the raid late Tuesday night in Taloqan were civilians. NATO-led forces said they were armed insurgents.

Underscoring his often testy relationship with his Western backers, Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the killing of what he said were four family members by NATO troops.

Karzai asked for an explanation from General David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

"Despite repeated warnings from the Afghan President to prevent wayward operations by NATO troops, it seems such incidents have not been stopped," a statement issued by the presidential palace said.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said Afghan and ISAF troops killed four insurgents, including two armed females, while targeting a member of the al Qaeda-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).

In Kabul, a spokesman for Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security said an IMU leader had been targeted in the raid but "unfortunately" three others, including two women, had also been killed. The IMU leader had been visiting Takhar from neighboring Kunduz province, he said.

The mistaken killing of civilians by foreign troops is a major source of friction between Karzai and Western leaders, and complicates efforts to win support from ordinary Afghans for an increasingly unpopular war.

"Night raids" cause deep anger and resentment among Afghans, due to mistaken killings and what many see as an attack on their dignity. Insurgents are responsible for the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths, U.N. figures show.

HOSPITAL "PACKED WITH WOUNDED"

In Taloqan, demonstrators threw stones and handfuls of mud at a billboard of Karzai, and chanted "death to Karzai."

The body of one of the four killed in the raid, draped in a green blanket, was held up on a wooden stretcher and rushed through the crowd.

Police and Afghan security guards opened fire to disperse the crowd, which Takhar police chief Shah Jahan Noori estimated at 3,000 people, after the violence mounted.

"There is no more room in the hospital, it is already packed with wounded," Hassan Baseej, head of the provincial hospital, told Reuters. He said most of the casualties had gunshot wounds.

The latest civilian deaths come at a time of high anti-Western sentiment. Last month, seven foreign United Nations staffers were killed when protests against the burning of a Koran by a fundamentalist U.S. pastor turned violent.

Despite the presence of around 150,000 foreign troops, violence across Afghanistan last year reached its worst levels since the Taliban were overthrown in late 2001, with record casualties on all sides of the conflict.

Petraeus has stepped up night raids since taking over last year, despite calls from Karzai for them to be stopped.

Police chief Noori, who lives near the site of the night-time raid in Taloqan, said there were no insurgents in the area. He said only Afghan civilians had been killed and the raid had been based on "false intelligence."

"This will only create distance between ordinary people, the government and its international partners," he said.

ISAF said in a statement the two women who had been killed were both armed, one with an explosives-packed suicide vest.

"A woman wearing a chest rack and armed with an AK-47 rifle attempted to engage the force. The security force gave numerous verbal warnings, but when the armed female pointed her weapon at them, she was subsequently killed," the statement said.

Another woman then came out of the compound waving a pistol at troops, it said. "The security force engaged the female resulting in her death," ISAF said.

In male-dominated Afghanistan, female fighters are very rarely found among insurgent ranks, and the few who have been identified are mostly foreigners. A NATO spokesman said he did not know the nationalities of the dead women.

Taloqan resident Mahroof Shah said soldiers descended from four helicopters and started shooting.

The incident came after a week in which Afghan officials said NATO troops had inadvertently killed three young Afghan civilians, including a 10-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, in separate incidents. ISAF has also apologized for the death of an unarmed teenage woman and an Afghan policeman a week ago.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi;
Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

Twelve dead in protests after two women killed in Afghan raid, R, 18.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/18/us-afghanistan-raid-idUSTRE74H3CM20110518

After Bin Laden,

U.S. Reassesses Afghan Strategy

May 10, 2011
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — The killing of Osama bin Laden has set off a reassessment of the war in Afghanistan and the broader effort to combat terrorism, with Congress, the military and the Obama administration weighing the goals, strategies, costs and underlying authority for a conflict that is now almost a decade old.

Two influential senators — John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana — suggested Tuesday that it was time to rethink the Afghanistan war effort, forecasting the beginning of what promises to be a fierce debate about how quickly the United States should begin pulling troops out of the country.

“We should be working toward the smallest footprint necessary, a presence that puts Afghans in charge and presses them to step up to that task,” Mr. Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said at a hearing. “Make no mistake, it is fundamentally unsustainable to continue spending $10 billion a month on a massive military operation with no end in sight.”

Both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lugar, the committee’s senior Republican, said they remained opposed to a precipitous withdrawal.

Still, “the broad scope of our activities suggests that we are trying to remake the economic, political and security culture of Afghanistan — but that ambitious goal is beyond our power,” Mr. Lugar said. “A reassessment of our Afghanistan policy on the basis of whether our overall geostrategic interests are being served by spending roughly $10 billion a month in that country was needed before our troops took out Bin Laden.”

Inside the Pentagon, however, officials make the case that rather than using Bin Laden’s death as a justification for withdrawal, the United States should continue the current strategy in Afghanistan to secure additional gains and to further pressure the Taliban to come to the bargaining table for negotiations on political reconciliation.

And in Congress, a debate is getting under way over the underlying authority used by two successive administrations to wage the post-Sept. 11 fight against terrorist organizations and their supporters.

The House Armed Services Committee is expected to take up a defense authorization bill on Wednesday that includes a new authorization for the government to use military force in the war on terrorism. The provision has set off an argument over whether it is a mere update — or a sweeping, open-ended expansion — of the power Congress granted to the executive branch in 2001.

The new authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda was unveiled by the committee chairman, Representative Howard P. McKeon, Republican of California. The committee is scheduled to vote Wednesday on amendments to the bill.

The provision states that Congress “affirms” that “the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces,” and that the president is authorized to use military force — including detention without trial — of members and substantial supporters of those forces.

That language, which would codify into federal law a definition of the enemy that the Obama administration has adopted in defending against lawsuits filed by Guantánamo Bay detainees, would supplant the existing military force authorization that Congress passed overwhelmingly on Sept. 14, 2001. It instead named the enemy as the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Critics of Mr. McKeon’s provision have reacted with alarm to what they see as an effort to entrench in a federal statute unambiguous authority for the executive branch to wage war against terrorists who are deemed associates of Al Qaeda but who lack a clear tie to the Sept. 11 attacks.

In a joint letter to Congress, about two dozen groups — including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights — contended that the proposal amounted to an open-ended grant of authority to the executive branch, legitimizing an unending war from Yemen to Somalia and beyond.

“This monumental legislation — with a large-scale and practically irrevocable delegation of war power from Congress to the president — could commit the United States to a worldwide war without clear enemies, without any geographical boundaries” and “without any boundary relating to time or specific objective to be achieved,” the letter warned.

But Mr. McKeon argued in a statement that the provision did nothing more than codify the Obama administration’s interpretation of its legal authority to address the threat of Al Qaeda in light of its splintering and evolution over the past decade.

“This bill does not expand the war effort,” he said. “Instead, the legislation better aligns the old legal authorities used to detain and prosecute those intent on attacking America with the threats our country faces today.”

President Obama will soon begin considering plans for making good on his pledge to begin withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan in July. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior commander in Afghanistan, is expected to submit his options soon for carrying out Mr. Obama’s order.

On Tuesday, the commander of American and allied forces across the violent, contested provinces of eastern Afghanistan said that the death of Bin Laden might weaken the syndicate of insurgent groups battling the Kabul government, although it may take months to determine which might seek reconciliation and which will seek revenge.

The commander, Maj. Gen. John F. Campbell of the 101st Airborne Division, said during a video news conference to the Pentagon from his headquarters at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan that the death of Al Qaeda’s founder might splinter historic ties between Al Qaeda and indigenous insurgent leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan who helped protect it.

The insurgency is made up of a number of groups with different motivations, different goals and different relationships with Al Qaeda. The organizations may still be digesting the news of Bin Laden’s death before deciding on a course of action.

General Campbell said he had not yet seen any increase in the flow of fighters from Pakistan or attacks attributed to revenge for Bin Laden’s death.

Still, the images of Bin Laden living in comfort in a Pakistan safe house may undermine the morale of frontline insurgent fighters, General Campbell said, coming as some insurgent foot soldiers are said to be expressing frustration with their leadership’s commanding from the relative safety of Pakistan.

“I think the insurgents are going to say, ‘Hey, you know, why am I doing this?’ ” he said. “And I think there’s great potential for many of the insurgents to say, ‘Hey, I want to reintegrate.’ ”

 

Helene Cooper contributed reporting.

    After Bin Laden, U.S. Reassesses Afghan Strategy, R, 10.5.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/world/middleeast/11military.html

U.S. issues warning,

violence grows across Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan | Mon May 9, 2011
7:44am EDT
By Rob Taylor

KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - U.S. officials in Kabul said on Monday the movements of staff in parts of Afghanistan's volatile south were being restricted, warning of more attacks after a two-day siege came to a bloody end and insurgents killed at least 11 people in other attacks.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued a security bulletin in which it said it had received specific threats of attacks in three areas in Helmand province. It gave no details about the nature of the threats.

Helmand lies west of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and the focus of efforts by tens of thousands of U.S., NATO and Afghan troops to quell a growing insurgency over the past year.

Afghan troops, aided by NATO-led forces, on Monday mopped up the remnants of a major assault launched by the Taliban in Kandahar city, the main city in the south, where the governor's compound and other key facilities were attacked by suicide bombers and Taliban fighters on Saturday.

"U.S. government personnel in Marjah have been confined to their compounds due to a reported specific threat to Afghan government facilities in Marjah, Lashkar Gah and possibly Gereshk beginning today," the U.S. bulletin said.

Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, is one of seven areas where a gradual handover of responsibility from foreign troops to Afghan security forces will begin in July.

That handover is the first stage of a plan under which all foreign combat troops will leave by the end of 2014.

Helmand has seen some of the worst fighting in the near decade-long war against the Taliban and other Islamist insurgents. In 2010, thousands of U.S. Marines and Afghan forces assaulted Marjah to clear insurgent strongholds, but ran into fierce resistance.

SPRING OFFENSIVE

The Taliban declared this month the start of a new "spring offensive." Dozens of insurgents had battled Afghan forces in Kandahar city since Saturday, holing up in a hotel and shopping mall before the last were killed on Sunday.

The battle paralyzed the city, with streets and shops closed as gunfire and explosions sent panicked residents fleeing.

Kandahar provincial governor Tooryalai Wesa said at least 20 attackers, many of them suicide bombers who had used explosives-packed vehicles, were killed during the operation.

Three Afghan troops and a civilian were also killed in battle that showed the Taliban retain the ability to launch telling strikes in an area where U.S. and Afghan leaders say significant progress has been made against the insurgents.

Wesa said 40 civilians and police were wounded.

Security officials took media to a building near Afghan intelligence offices in Kandahar where the last insurgents held off troops and police for more than 40 hours. Their bodies still lay inside the partially destroyed five-storey structure.

In the east, three Afghan civilians were killed by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle targeting a convoy of foreign troops in the Qarghayo district of Laghman province, district governor Saleh Mohammad said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said some troops were also wounded but gave no details. Saleh said 11 people were wounded.

Four villagers were found beheaded in eastern Khost province, although the Taliban denied responsibility, local authorities said. Taliban insurgents ambushed and killed four Afghan police in central Ghazni province on Sunday, police said.

Violence across Afghanistan last year reached its worst levels since the Taliban were overthrown in late 2001, with record casualties on all sides of the conflict.

The Taliban have managed to carry out a number of high-profile attacks inside Kandahar and in the capital Kabul over the past year despite Afghan and foreign forces beefing up security around both cities.

 

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi in KABUL and Rafiq Sherzad in QARGHAYO; Editing by Paul Tait)

    U.S. issues warning, violence grows across Afghanistan, R, 9.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/09/us-afghanistan-violence-idUSTRE7481XX20110509

U.N. urges all

to avoid civilian harm

as Taliban begin offensive

KABUL | Sun May 1, 2011
1:34am EDT
Reuters
By Rob Taylor

KABUL (Reuters) - The United Nations in Afghanistan has issued a plea for all sides to avoid civilian casualties after the Taliban opened a stepped-up campaign of violence with a suicide bombing that killed four people in the country's southeast.

The hardline Islamists have warned civilians to stay away from public gatherings, military bases and convoys, as well as government centers and buildings, as these would be the focus of a wave of attacks beginning on Sunday.

"Parties to the conflict must not deliberately attack, target or kill civilians, or indiscriminately harm them," said Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. chief in Afghanistan, in a statement released late on Saturday.

"We call on all parties to take all possible measures to protect civilians, especially in the forthcoming months when we expect, unfortunately, intensified conflict," he said.

In Paktika province, a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest blew up himself in Barmal district, killing four civilians including a local council leader and wounding 12 others, said provincial governor's spokesman Mukhlis Afghan. One of those killed was a woman.

Senior military commanders have been expecting a spike in violence with the arrival of the spring and summer "fighting season," although the usual winter lull was not seen as U.S-led forces pressed their attacks against insurgents, particularly in the Taliban's southern heartland.

Senior military officials say recent intelligence reports indicate the fresh campaign of increased violence will last about a week and be mounted by the Taliban, supported by the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network and other insurgents.

Security has been increased at military bases and government offices, while in Kabul extra police have been stationed at so-called ring of steel security checkpoints around the city to search vehicles.

The Taliban said in a statement on Saturday the targets of the attacks would be foreign forces, high-ranking officials of President Hamid Karzai's government, members of the cabinet and lawmakers, as well as the heads of companies working for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

While Washington and ISAF commanders believe they have made inroads against a growing insurgency since 30,000 extra U.S. troops were sent to Afghanistan last year, the violence has shown little sign of abating.

Attacks across Afghanistan hit record levels in 2010, with civilian and military casualties the worst since U.S-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban government in late 2001.

The United Nations said it had relocated some of its staff in Afghanistan after receiving what it said were credible threats of increased attacks in several locations around the country.

The United Nations has been the target of several insurgent attacks over the past two years and seven international staff were killed last month when protesters overran a U.N. compound in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

De Mistura said indiscriminate use of bombs by the Taliban in cities and elsewhere had caused huge numbers of civilian casualties, while air strikes by the NATO-led force had also caused many deaths.

The number of civilians killed in Afghanistan in 2010 rose 15 percent from the previous year to 2,777, according to the United Nations, with insurgents responsible for about three-quarters of those deaths.

"Afghan civilians have paid the price of war for too long - it is more urgent than ever that all parties act to prevent this suffering and that in the forthcoming spring we also see a surge in protection of civilians," de Mistura said.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi;

Editing by Andrew Marshall)

    U.N. urges all to avoid civilian harm as Taliban begin offensive, R, 1.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/01/us-afghanistan-taliban-idUSTRE73T0JU20110501

Senior Qaeda leader in Afghanistan

killed: NATO

KABUL | Tue Apr 26, 2011
4:34am EDT
Reuters
By Rob Taylor

KABUL (Reuters) - NATO-led forces in Afghanistan said on Tuesday they had killed a senior al Qaeda leader and the second most wanted insurgent in the country in an airstrike in eastern Kunar province, bordering Pakistan, ending a near four-year manhunt.

Abu Hafs al-Najdi, also known as Abdul Ghani, a Saudi Arabian, was killed 12 days ago in Dangam district, on April 13, as he met other senior insurgents and al Qaeda members, an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) statement said.

"Abdul Ghani was responsible for the coordination of numerous high-profile attacks. On the morning of his death, he reportedly directed the suicide attack that killed tribal elder Malik Zarin and nine other Afghan civilians," ISAF said.

Abu Hafs al-Najdi was al Qaeda's operations chief for Kunar and was responsible for establishing insurgent camps and training sites throughout the volatile mountain province.

ISAF said he was one of more than 25 al Qaeda operatives killed in Afghanistan during operations over the past month in the leadup to Afghanistan's summer fighting months.

News of his death came a day after hundreds of insurgents tunneled their way out of a high-security jail in southern Kandahar, triggering an extensive manhunt and tightening of security along the Pakistan border.

Najdi, whose real name was Saleh Naiv Almakhlvi Day, controlled and armed a network of insurgents that targeted Afghan and ISAF security force outposts throughout Kunar, including two in February, ISAF said.

He was also No.23 on Saudi Arabia's list of 85 most wanted militants issued in 2009, which said he was active in either Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran. ISAF began hunting him in Afghanistan in 2007.

ISAF said Najdi was with a Pakistani Qaeda operative named Waqas when the airstrike took place, killing both, as well as an unspecified number of other insurgents.

"Abdul Ghani commonly instructed subordinate leaders to conduct kidnapping operations against foreigners ... and he was responsible for directing suicide bomb attacks targeting U.S. government officials," ISAF said.

Insurgents in the country are under stepped up pressure from NATO-led troops and a growing Afghan army ahead of the start this summer of a transfer of security responsibilities from foreign to Afghan forces.

An ISAF spokesman would not name the coalition's top insurgent target for fear of hampering their search, but alliance commanders have previously claimed there are only 50 to 100 Qaeda fighters still active in Afghanistan.

The withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Korengal and Pech river valleys in Kunar in late 2009 has created more space for al Qaeda and the Taliban to expand their operations in the region, security website The Long War Journal said.

 

(Editing by Andrew Marshall)

    Senior Qaeda leader in Afghanistan killed: NATO, R, 26.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/26/us-afghanistan-insurgent-idUSTRE73P1EE20110426

Taliban Help Hundreds

Tunnel Out of Prison’s

Political Wing

April 25, 2011
The New York Times
By TAIMOOR SHAH and ALISSA J. RUBIN

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The Taliban staged an audacious prison break here early Monday, freeing at least 476 political prisoners through a long tunnel, according to the warden, Gen. Ghulam Dastagir Mayar.

He said that security authorities had discovered in the morning that the prisoners from the political wing of the building were gone, and that the authorities had just found the tunnel. “We do not know if the tunnel was dug from outside or inside the prison,” he said.

The Kandahar prison is the largest and most substantial prison in southern Afghanistan, and it houses Taliban who were captured in Zabul, Oruzgan and Kandahar, including some senior Taliban figures as well as many lower level Taliban, according to security officers working with the prison.

It was the second time there has been a major prison break at the Sariposa prison in Kandahar. The Taliban orchestrated the freeing of 1,200 prisoners, of whom 350 were Taliban members, on June 13, 2008, staging an attack on the prison that killed 15 guards.

The break comes at a critical moment in the Taliban’s fight in southern Afghanistan. Pushed out of their strongholds in the rural areas outside the city and under pressure from a large number of NATO troops who have fanned out into the villages, they have been able to maintain a presence, but nothing close to the dominant role they had even a year ago.

Bringing back a large cadre of experienced fighters, many of whom will have been able to refine their skills in prison, will give the Taliban leadership the flexibility and human resources to send fighters into new districts where there are fewer NATO troops and bolster their numbers in those closer to Kandahar.

A Taliban spokesman for the south and west of the country, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, said that a total of 541 prisoners had escaped and that among them were 106 Taliban commanders. “Now they are all in safe havens,” he said.

In a deft propaganda ploy, the Taliban gave a gripping description of the prison break in a statement they sent out to the news media ahead of any comment from the security authorities who were just in the process of discovering the tunnel.

Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said in the statement: “We have planned and worked on this for five months, and the tunnel is 360 meters long,” he said. “This was very important for us; we were trying to not leave anyone behind, not even one sick or old political prisoner.”

“Our mujahedeen worked in a very careful way” so as not to be discovered, Mr. Mujahid said. The tunnel wound under security check posts outside the prison and under a main highway.

At 11 p.m. Sunday, three Taliban prisoners, who he said were the only ones who knew, “Went from cell to cell waking people and guiding each of them to the tunnel. More Taliban were on hand as the prisoners emerged from the dirt and dust of the tunnel to guide the dazed prisoners to waiting vehicles. Also on hand were Taliban fighters and suicide bombers in case the security forces woke up and there was a fight.

“Luckily we did not have to use them,” Mr. Mujahid said. “The security forces did not know until sunrise.”

Taimoor Shah reported from Kandahar, and Alissa J. Rubin from Kabul, Afghanistan.

    Taliban Help Hundreds Tunnel Out of Prison’s Political Wing, NYT, 25.4.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/world/asia/25afghanistan.html

U.S. drone strike kills 25

in Pakistan's North Waziristan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan | Fri Apr 22, 2011
3:56am EDT
Reuters

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Four missiles fired by two suspected U.S. pilotless aircraft hit a house in Pakistan's tribal region of North Waziristan on the Afghan border on Friday, killing 25 militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The drone strike happened in Mir Ali, a town about 35 kilometers (20 miles) east of the region's main town of Miranshah.

An intelligence official in the region, who requested not to be identified, told Reuters that the house was being used as a militant hideout.

"They (the militants) have surrounded the area where the attack happened and are not allowing anybody to go there," he said, adding 25 bodies had been recovered from the rubble and three women were among those killed.

Another official said some foreign militants were among the dead, but that their numbers and nationalities could not confirmed.

The strike came two days after a visit to Islamabad by Admiral Mike Mullen, the top U.S. military official, in which he expressed concern over continuing links between Pakistan's main intelligence agency, the ISI, and militants attacking U.S.-led forces across the border in Afghanistan.

North Waziristan is a known sanctuary for al Qaeda and Taliban militants near the Afghan border.

The United States has been using drone attacks to target al Qaeda-linked militants over the past few years in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, a source of concern for the Pakistan government, which says civilian casualties stoke public anger and bolster support for militancy.

(Reporting by Haji Mujtaba; Writing by Kamran Haider;

Editing by Rebecca Conway and Alex Richardson)

    U.S. drone strike kills 25 in Pakistan's North Waziristan, 22.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/22/us-pakistan-drone-idUSTRE73L0AF20110422

Talks on U.S. Presence in Afghanistan

After Pullout Unnerve Region

April 18, 2011
The New York Times
By ROD NORDLAND

KABUL, Afghanistan — First, American officials were talking about July 2011 as the date to begin the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Then, the Americans and their NATO allies began to talk about transition, gradually handing over control of the war to the Afghans until finally pulling out in 2014. Now, however, the talk is all about what happens after 2014.

Afghanistan and the United States are in the midst of negotiating what they are calling a Strategic Partnership Declaration for beyond 2014.

Critics, including many of Afghanistan’s neighbors, call it the Permanent Bases Agreement — or, in a more cynical vein, Great Game 3.0, drawing a comparison with the ill-fated British and Russian rivalry in the region during the 19th and 20th centuries.

It is without doubt a delicate process, and one that comes at a critical time. Afghan officials have expressed concern that the negotiations could scuttle peace talks with the Taliban, now in their early stages, because the insurgents have insisted that foreign forces must leave the country before they will deal. That they are already talking is an indication they are willing to compromise on the timing of a withdrawal — but it is hard to imagine Taliban acceptance of a lasting American presence here.

Formal talks on a long-term agreement began last month under Marc Grossman, the official who has replaced Richard C. Holbrooke, the diplomat who died in December, as the Obama administration’s envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a delegation visited Kabul under the direction of Frank Ruggiero, a State Department official who ran the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team until last year.

The reaction regionally was immediate. The Iranian interior minister made a rushed visit to Kabul, followed shortly by the national security advisers of India and Russia.

The Russians, though generally supportive of NATO’s role in Afghanistan, were alarmed at the prospect of a long-term Western presence.

“The Russian side supports the development of Afghanistan by its own forces in all areas — security, economic, political — only by its own forces, especially after 2014,” said Stepan Anikeev, a political adviser at the Russian Embassy here. “How is transition possible with these bases?”

American officials have hastened to assure Russia and other neighbors about their intentions after 2014. Mr. Grossman made a visit late last month to Moscow to do so. And officials from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on down have insisted that any presence after 2014 would not mean permanent bases.

It is a “long-term framework for our bilateral cooperation,” Mrs. Clinton said in a speech to the Asia Society on Feb. 18.

“In no way should our enduring commitment be misunderstood as a desire by America or our allies to occupy Afghanistan against the will of its people,” Mrs. Clinton said, adding, “We do not seek any permanent American military bases in their country.”

The Russians, however, have complained that any talk of a foreign troop presence in Afghanistan after 2014 violates international understandings, including one made in a joint statement by President Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev on June 24 supporting a neutral status for Afghanistan.

Afghan officials have acknowledged, however, that the talks do countenance some sort of long-term bases after 2014, if only for the purpose of continued training of Afghan troops. “What we’re discussing is a long-term strategic framework agreement,” said Ashraf Ghani, an adviser to President Hamid Karzai who is one of the Afghan negotiators. “The U.S. has many 10- to 25-year-long agreements, a wide range of agreements.”

“The important thing now is that the sense of abandonment that was in the air last year is gone now,” he said.

One person’s long-term base is another’s permanent base, however — and in the region many people took Mrs. Clinton’s assurances as proof that the United States was not leaving, whatever the bases are called.

“A 10- or 20-years agreement can be prolonged at any time,” Mr. Anikeev said. “And we have no guarantee they’re not permanent.”

“The Americans have not been honest about this, even among themselves,” said Mullah Attullah Lodin, deputy chairman of the High Peace Council of Afghanistan, which is charged with leading reconciliation efforts with the Taliban. “One says we are not building bases, another says we are building them, and it’s very confusing.”

The big concern, he said, was that if any such agreement were reached, it would make it that much harder to enter into serious peace talks with the Taliban. “That is the first thing the Taliban demand is the withdrawal of foreign troops,” Mullah Lodin said.

Rangin Dadfar Spanta, the national security adviser to Mr. Karzai, disagreed. “Reconciliation and a strategic relationship, they are not contradictory to one another. We have the same goals, peace and stability in Afghanistan, and elimination of sanctuaries and bases for terrorism, that is for the common good.”

Despite such worries, American and Afghan officials are negotiating on an accelerated timetable, with the Americans hoping to come to an agreement by July, when the first withdrawals of some American troops are to start, diplomats say.

“The Afghans are very worried about after 2014,” said a European diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic delicacies. “They’re trying to extract from the West as much as they can now.”

Mr. Ghani said that Afghan officials were hoping to win agreement on the transfer of Provincial Reconstruction Teams, which dispense aid from the United States and NATO countries directly to projects in the Afghan countryside, to Afghan government control. In general, the Afghans want to see more aid money funneled through their government, and they also want to see a reduced presence of the United Nations.

Then there is the issue of how the Afghans will be able to pay for their greatly enlarged police and military, which by some estimates will require $10 billion a year to sustain come 2014 — 10 times the Afghan government’s annual tax revenues.

“The whole mindset is to get as much as possible in the course of the next couple years,” the European diplomat said. “They really understand that they won’t get as much as they used to get, and they’re desperate to get as much as they can.”

One regional diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity for similar reasons, said the Americans were equally concerned to keep a long-term or permanent foothold in Afghanistan for their own interests as well.

“There was a time when the Americans were struggling to find one base in Central Asia,” he said. “Here is a place where they can have all the bases they want, and Afghanistan is a place between two potential nuclear Islamic powers, Iran and Pakistan.”

“There are forces of reaction who are itching to fire the starting gun on Great Game 3.0, and the insurgents will try to exploit this,” said Mark Sedwill, the NATO senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, in a recent speech.

Reaching accord among the diplomats on a Strategic Partnership Declaration will only be a first step. Mr. Karzai has already said any such agreement would have to be put to a nationwide loya jirga, a tribal assembly that acts as referendum on important issues.

“In general, people in Afghanistan are against foreign forces,” Mullah Lodin, the negotiator, said. “I don’t think the loya jirga will ever support foreign forces in the country.”

Mr. Spanta recognized the difficulty. “We have to convince the Afghan people there is something for us in this,” he said.

    Talks on U.S. Presence in Afghanistan After Pullout Unnerve Region, NYT, 18.4.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/world/asia/19bases.html

Suicide attack kills 5 foreign soldiers

in Afghanistan

JALALABAD, Afghanistan | Sat Apr 16, 2011
2:54pm EDT
Reuters
By Rafiq Sherzad

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber in an Afghan army uniform killed five foreign and four Afghan soldiers on Saturday at a sprawling desert base in the east of the country, the highest toll on NATO-led troops in a single attack for several months.

Afghanistan's Ministry of Defense said it was investigating whether the attacker was an insurgent disguised in a fake uniform, or the latest in a string of "rogue" members of the Afghan security forces who have turned on their colleagues and mentors.

On Friday, a suicide bomber in police uniform evaded tight security in police Headquarters in Kandahar city and killed Khan Mohammad Mujahid, provincial police chief of Kandahar.

The latest attack was inside one of the biggest military installations in increasingly volatile east Afghanistan, home to the 201st Corps of the Afghan army, Afghan officials say.

The NATO-led coalition said it happened on a neighboring foreign base, during a meeting. The two are located close together in the Gamberi desert, a remote area that stretches between Laghman and Nangarhar provinces.

"Our reporting indicates there was a meeting taking place and that is when the attack happened," said Major Tim James, spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)

The attack highlights the pressure the U.S. and NATO troops face as they rapidly train Afghan security forces to pave the way for critical security handover which begins later this year, in the face of a spiraling insurgency.

Over 120 foreign soldiers have died this year in Afghanistan, but this is the deadliest single incident since December last year, when a suicide car bomber killed six NATO and two Afghan troops in Kandahar province.

 

ROGUE ATTACKERS?

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in an email statement, saying 12 foreign troops and 14 Afghan soldiers were killed. The group frequently exaggerates casualty figures.

He said the bomber was from central Daikondi province, had enlisted with the Afghan army a month ago and detonated his explosives at a meeting between Afghan and foreign troops.

The Defense Ministry declined immediate comment on whether the attacker was a real soldier, saying it was investigating.

The uniform does not prove conclusively that he was a soldier because Afghan security force outfits are readily available in markets across the country -- although their sale is technically illegal.

Despite tighter vetting began by Afghan authorities for recruits, there are worries about the Taliban's ability to infiltrate the Afghan security forces.

Western forces in Afghanistan have begun to train counter-intelligence agents to help root them out.

U.S. Lieutenant General William Caldwell, head of the U.S. and NATO training mission in Afghanistan, said earlier this week 222 agents had been trained since the program began last summer, and there was a target of 445 agents by the end of the year.

(Writing by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison)

    Suicide attack kills 5 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan, R, 16.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/16/us-afghanistan-violence-idUSTRE73F0JR20110416

U.S.-Pakistan intelligence operations

frozen since January

ISLAMABAD | Sat Apr 9, 2011
9:00am EDT
By Chris Allbritton

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Joint U.S.-Pakistan intelligence operations have been halted since late January, a senior Pakistani intelligence officer said, reflecting strain in a relationship seen as crucial to combating militants and the war in Afghanistan.

Uneasy U.S.-Pakistani ties have become even more tense after a string of diplomatic disputes so far this year, including a massive drone strike in March and the case of Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor who shot dead two Pakistanis on January 27 in the eastern city of Lahore.

"Presently, joint operations are on hold," a senior Pakistani intelligence officer told Reuters, adding that they were halted after Davis killed the two men. A Pakistani court has since acquitted Davis of murder and he has been released.

Previous joint operations between the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency and the CIA have led to the capture of high-profile al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

"The agency's ties to the ISI have been strong over the years, and when there are issues to sort out, we work through them," CIA spokesman George Little told Reuters. "That's the sign of a healthy partnership."

But a U.S. official familiar with the state of relations said the Pakistanis are making more effort to curb, restrict, or at least more intensely monitor, CIA activities. The revelation that armed CIA contractors such as Davis were working in Pakistan deeply angered and embarrassed the ISI.

"It is our land. We know how to tackle things. We will set the rules of the game. It is not Afghanistan," a senior Pakistani military official told Reuters. "They have to cease spying operations."

Since then, a few dozen contractors the ISI says are associated with the agency -- the exact number is unclear -- and part of a parallel intelligence network have quickly and quietly left the country.

A small contingent of American troops training Pakistanis in counter-insurgency is also in danger of being reduced.

DRONE STRIKES DOWN

The frequency of drone strikes, an unacknowledged CIA program that the United States considers its most successful weapon against al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership and which relies on at least some Pakistani cooperation, also has fallen, with just nine strikes in March compared to a peak of 22 in September 2010.

"It is very clear that intrusion into our territory is no longer acceptable and drone flights inside our territory is an intrusion," the military official said, suggesting the drones could be shot down. Civilians casualties inflame anti-American sentiment in Pakistan and bolster support for the militants.

The latest strike, on March 17, killed at least 45 people, leading Pakistan's chief of the army, General Ashfaq Kayani, to issue a rare, public criticism of the United States, which in turn is frustrated at Pakistan's apparent reluctance to launch a major military offensive against militants in its tribal North Waziristan region that borders Afghanistan.

A semi-annual White House report on Afghanistan and Pakistan harshly criticized Pakistan as having "no clear path toward defeating the insurgency." In equally harsh terms, Pakistan rejected the report and said it would deal with insurgents in its own way.

The strain in relations could hinder efforts by the Obama administration to get the annual $1.5 billion in economic assistance for Pakistan appropriated for the 2012 fiscal year through Congress, said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA Middle East expert who has advised the White House.

"Foreign aid is always something that's easy to cut by a budget-tightening Congress, and foreign aid to Pakistan would be the easiest thing to cut," he said. "It's very hard to persuade congressmen why we should be giving money to a country that supports the Afghan Taliban."

But no matter how bruised they become, U.S.-Pakistani ties are too strategic to unravel.

"We need to work together more transparently and not let incidents like Raymond Davis damage the relationship," the Pakistani intelligence officer said. "The stakes are too high."

(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider in Islamabad and Mark Hosenball in Washington, editing by Miral Fahmy)

    U.S.-Pakistan intelligence operations frozen since January, R, 9.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/09/us-pakistan-usa-idUSTRE7381MG20110409

U.S. doubts Pakistan's

plan to defeat Taliban: report

WASHINGTON | Tue Apr 5, 2011
7:49pm EDT
By Alister Bull

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pakistan lacks a robust plan to defeat Taliban militants and its security forces struggle to hold areas cleared of the al Qaeda-linked fighters at great cost, according to U.S. report released on Tuesday.

The United States wants Pakistan to subdue Taliban fighters using safe havens in its rugged tribal areas to attack U.S. forces across the border in Afghanistan.

"There remains no clear path toward defeating the insurgency in Pakistan, despite the unprecedented and sustained deployment of over 147,000 forces," President Barack Obama's administration said in a report to lawmakers in Congress.

Major security operations by Pakistani forces along the lawless Afghan border have failed to break Taliban fighters' resolve, a fact underlined by twin suicide bombings of a Sufi shrine in eastern Pakistan on Sunday that killed 41.

The report highlighted concern that even if areas were cleared of militants, fighters were not being kept out.

"This is the third time in the past two years that the army has had to conduct major clearing operations ... a clear indication of the inability of the Pakistani military and government to render clear areas resistant to insurgent return," the report said.

The doctrine of clearing ground occupied by insurgents, holding it against their return and then building up the infrastructure and public services to engender confidence in the local population was used effectively by U.S. forces in Iraq.

One problem was the "low operational readiness" of the Pakistani military's helicopter fleet -- a vital tool in effective counterinsurgency strategy. The report noted this situation had been exacerbated by Pakistan's reluctance to accept U.S. maintenance teams to work on the helicopters.

On a more encouraging note, the report said U.S.-Pakistan military cooperation had survived the outcry caused by a deadly shooting incident involving a CIA contractor.

"In spite of strains on the relationship stemming from the detention of U.S. official Raymond Davis, bilateral military cooperation continues on a positive trajectory," it said.

A Pakistani court acquitted Davis of murder charges last month after a deal that involved the payment of compensation, or "blood money," to the families of two men that he shot and killed. Davis said the men he shot were trying to rob him.

On Afghanistan, the report was sharply critical of a financial crisis involving Afghanistan's Kabulbank that it said could undermine international donor confidence in the country.

"The Afghan government's inability - thus far -- to respond adequately and prosecute those responsible for the KabulBank financial crisis has given donors great concern," it said.

The Afghan government has agreed to break up Afghanistan's biggest private lender after a multimillion-dollar fraud scandal, in the face of the threatened loss of support from the International Monetary Fund and billions of dollars of aid.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart; editing by Christopher Wilson)

    U.S. doubts Pakistan's plan to defeat Taliban: report, R, 5.4.2011,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/05/us-pakistan-report-idUSTRE73488R20110405

Students gather in Kabul

on fifth day of Afghan protests

KABUL | Tue Apr 5, 2011
3:48am EDT
Reuters
By Hamid Shalizi

KABUL (Reuters) - Around 250 young Afghans gathered at Kabul University on Tuesday shouting "death to America" on the fifth day of protests against the burning of a Koran by a fundamentalist U.S. pastor.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets in protests around Afghanistan. There has been deadly violence in two cities, although most protests ended with nothing more dramatic than burning of flags and effigies.

Twelve people died in Kandahar over Saturday and Sunday, when demonstrators waving white Taliban flags burned cars, attacked police, smashed shops and sacked a girls' high school.

On Friday, seven foreign U.N. staff and five Afghan protesters were killed after demonstrators overran their office in normally peaceful Mazar-i-Sharif city in the north.

The Kabul demonstrators, who included both university students and outsiders, were staying on the university campus, said Hashmat Stanekzai, spokesman for the Kabul police chief.

Across Afghanistan, protesters have denounced fundamentalist Christian preacher Terry Jones, who supervised the burning of a Koran at a church in Florida on March 20. There have been angry sermons by imams urging people to stand up in defense of their religion.

But in eastern Kunar province, a conservative insurgent stronghold which has not seen any protests, senior clerics who form a council known as an ulema, said they were actively working to prevent any gathering because of the violence in other areas.

"The ulema are in discussions to avoid protests against Koran burning because only Afghans face losses of life and damage to their properties, not the one who burned the holy Koran," said Shahzada Shahid, head of the ulema council in Kunar and a member of parliament from the province.

"Terry Jones will be happy seeing Muslims kill Muslims and bloodshed, he won't be hurt," he added.

(Additional Reporting by Ahmad Masood; Writing by Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by Richard Borsuk)

    Students gather in Kabul on fifth day of Afghan protests, R, 5.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/05/us-afghanistan-protests-idUSL3E7F303320110405

Two killed and dozens hurt

in third day of Afghan protests

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan | Sun Apr 3, 2011
12:44pm EDT
Reuters
By Ismail Sameem

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Two policemen were killed and more than 30 people wounded in the southern city of Kandahar on Sunday during the third day of violent protests across Afghanistan against the burning of a Koran by a radical fundamentalist U.S. pastor, officials said.

Violence at earlier demonstrations claimed more than 20 lives. Ten people were killed and more than 80 wounded in Kandahar on Saturday. Seven foreign U.N. staff and five Afghan protesters were killed on Friday after demonstrators overran an office in normally peaceful Mazar-i-Sharif city in the north.

On Sunday, hundreds of people had marched through Kandahar, toward another U.N. office, on the second day of protests in the city after U.S. preacher Terry Jones had supervised the burning of a copy of the Koran in front of about 50 people at a church in Florida on March 20.

"The information I have is that two policemen have been killed and 20 others, including police, protesters and citizens, have been wounded," Ahmad Wali Karzai, head of the Kandahar provincial council, told Reuters.

Another 14 people, including two children, were wounded when protesters seized a gas canister taken from a shop and set it on fire, causing an explosion, Zalmay Ayoubi, the spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor said.

There were also peaceful demonstrations in Kabul, western Herat city, Jalalabad city in the east and northern Tahar province, and it initially appeared that Sunday's march in Kandahar would also finish without incident.

The governor had promised a strong police presence and many of the morning's demonstrators had drifted away before violence broke out in the early afternoon.

ANGER

Afghan and foreign officials said insurgent infiltrators had sparked the killings, although a Taliban spokesman said they were driven by spontaneous emotion.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on Congress to condemn the burning of the Koran and prevent it from happening again.

Karzai made the request at a meeting with U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry and General David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, the presidential palace said in a statement.

"The American Congress and Senate must condemn this in clear words, show their stance, and prevent such incidents from happening again," the statement said.

Eikenberry read to Karzai from U.S. President Barack Obama's earlier condemnation of the Koran burning, the statement said.

Obama denounced the act of burning a Koran but did not mention Jones by name.

On Sunday, Petraeus joined the condemnation being voiced by many other political and religious leaders, urging Afghans to understand only a small number of people had been disrespectful to the Koran and Islam.

"We condemn, in particular, the action of an individual in the United States who recently burned the Holy Koran," Petraeus said in a statement, which was also signed by NATO's senior civilian representative, ambassador Mark Sedwill.

"We also offer condolences to the families of all those injured and killed in violence which occurred in the wake of the burning of the Holy Koran," he said.

Around 1,000 people blocked the main highway from Kabul to Jalalabad earlier on Sunday and burned U.S. flags.

"We want the preacher who burned the holy Koran to get a severe punishment," said 20-year-old protester Jalil Ahmad. "He is not a human being, he is a brain-dead animal."

In an interview with Reuters on Saturday, Jones was unrepentant and defiantly vowed to lead an anti-Islam protest outside the biggest mosque in the United States later this month.

The Taliban said in a statement on Sunday that Afghans were still ready to give their lives to protest against an offence that it said the West was not taking seriously.

"The U.S. government should have punished the perpetrators, but the American authorities and those in other countries not only did not have a serious reaction, but defended (the burning) to some extent in the name of freedom of religion and speech," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement.

(Reporting by Ismail Sameem; Writing by Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by Paul Tait)

    Two killed and dozens hurt in third day of Afghan protests, R, 3.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/03/us-afghanistan-protests-idUSL3E7F303320110403

Obama calls

killings in Afghanistan outrageous

WASHINGTON | Sat Apr 2, 2011
8:57pm EDT
By Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Saturday the killings in Afghanistan after a fundamentalist Christian U.S. preacher burned a Koran were "outrageous" while calling the desecration of the holy text an act of bigotry.

"The desecration of any holy text, including the Koran, is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry," Obama said in a statement released by the White House.

"However, to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity," he said.

At least 10 people have been killed and 83 wounded in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, officials said on Saturday, on a second day of violent protests over the actions of extremist Christian preacher Terry Jones, who supervised the burning of the Koran in front of about 50 people at a church in Florida on March 20, according to his website.

A suicide attack also hit a NATO military base in the capital Kabul, the day after protesters overran a U.N. mission in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and killed seven foreign staff in the deadliest attack on the U.N. in Afghanistan.

"No religion tolerates the slaughter and beheading of innocent people, and there is no justification for such a dishonorable and deplorable act," Obama said.

"Now is a time to draw upon the common humanity that we share, and that was so exemplified by the U.N. workers who lost their lives trying to help the people of Afghanistan."

Obama did not mention Jones by name in his statement.

JONES UNREPENTANT

In an interview with Reuters at the tiny church he leads in Gainesville, Florida, Jones was unrepentant and vowed to lead an anti-Islam demonstration later this month in front of the largest mosque in the United States, located in Dearborn, Michigan.

Last year, Jones threatened to burn a Koran but did not end up following through at that time. His threat last year came amid controversy over plans by Muslim leaders seeking to build an Islamic center and mosque near the site of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York.

Obama appealed to Americans then to respect religious freedom while warning that burning the Koran would endanger U.S. troops abroad.

The recent burning initially passed relatively unnoticed in Afghanistan, but after criticism from President Hamid Karzai, and calls for justice during Friday sermons, thousands poured into the streets in several cities to denounce Jones.

The United States has said it would help the United Nations in any way after the attack.

Obama said in his statement that the American people honor the people killed in the attack on the United Nations in Mazar-i-Sharif.

"Once again, we extend our deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of those who were killed, and to the people of the nations that they came from."

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Will Dunham)

    Obama calls killings in Afghanistan outrageous, R, 2.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/03/us-afghanistan-violence-un-obama-idUSTRE7312MI20110403

Worst attack on U.N. in Afghanistan

kills at least 7

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan | Fri Apr 1, 2011
7:52pm EDT
Reuters
By Mohammad Bashir

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghans protesting the burning of a Koran by an obscure U.S. pastor over-ran a U.N. compound on Friday and killed at least seven international staff in the deadliest-ever attack on the United Nations in Afghanistan.

Thousands of demonstrators flooded into the streets after Friday prayers and headed for the U.N. mission in usually peaceful Mazar-i-Sharif, a city considered safe enough to be in the vanguard of a crucial security transition.

The governor of Balkh province said insurgents had used the march as cover to attack the compound, in a battle that raged for hours and raised serious questions about plans to make the city a pilot for security transfer to national forces.

The confirmed dead were three international U.N. staff and four international Gurkha guards.

In New York, U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy told reporters after briefing members of the Security Council who convened an emergency session to discuss the attack, that some of the protesters seemed to be more than demonstrators.

"Some of them were clearly armed," Le Roy said, adding that they appeared to have targeted the foreigners at the compound. "We are not sure at all that the U.N. was the target."

"Maybe they wanted to find an international target and the U.N. was the one in Mazar-i-Sharif," Le Roy said, adding that an investigation of the incident was in progress.

The attackers overwhelmed security guards, burned parts of the compound and climbed up blast walls to topple a guard tower. Five protesters were also killed and about 20 wounded, some after trying to take weapons off U.N. security guards.

"The insurgents have taken advantage of the situation to attack the U.N. compound," said Governor Ata Mohammad Noor.

He told a news conference that many in the crowd of protesters had been carrying guns. Some 27 people have already been detained over the attack, he added.

Le Roy said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's chief-of-staff, Vijay Nambiar, and head of U.N. security Gregory Starr were heading to Kabul on Friday night. He added that U.N. security in Afghanistan would be reviewed.

Ban and the U.N. Security Council condemned the attack.

DEADLIEST ATTACK

The attack was one of the worst on the world body in years.

"It is the worst incident ever for U.N. staff in Afghanistan. Mazar mobs were active in the 1990s, repeatedly ransacking UN offices ... but so far as I remember, they never actually killed anyone," a former U.N. employee in Afghanistan told Reuters.

The worst previous attack was an insurgent assault on a Kabul guest house where U.N. staff were staying in October 2009. Five employees were killed and nine others wounded.

The two largest recent attacks on U.N. compounds in other countries are a 2007 bomb in Algiers that killed 17 U.N. staff, and a 2003 attack on the Baghdad hotel that was the U.N. headquarters there, which killed at least 22 people.

Christian preacher Terry Jones, who after international condemnation canceled a plan last year to burn copies of the Koran, supervised the burning of the book in front of about 50 people at a church in Florida on March 20, according to his website.

He told the British Broadcasting Corporation he did not feel guilty over the deaths in Mazar. "We are not responsible for their actions," Jones said, when asked about the attack.

Thousands of demonstrators marched through western Herat city and about 200 in Kabul to protest the same incident, but there was no violence at either demonstration.

Long-standing anger over civilian casualties has been heightened by the Koran burning and the recent publication of gruesome photographs of the body of an unarmed Afghan teenager killed by U.S. soldiers.

"COWARDLY" ATTACK

The Afghan police and army, whom the United Nations rely on for its first line of defense, were apparently unable to control the crowd. The NATO-led coalition said German troops answered a request for help, but it was not clear when the call was made or answered.

U.N. officials in New York said earlier that as many as 20 U.N. staff may have been killed. They said later that figure had included people who turned out to be Afghan demonstrators.

An Afghan police spokesman said two of the U.N. dead were beheaded. Le Roy said no one was beheaded, although one victim's throat was cut.

The head of the mission in the city, a Russian, was injured but was now in the hospital, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. Russia called on the Afghan government and international forces to "take all necessary measures" to protect U.N. workers.

Romania's Foreign Ministry said preliminary information suggested a Romanian citizen was among the dead, the Norwegian U.N. mission confirmed a Norwegian was one of the dead and Sweden confirmed a Swedish man was also killed.

U.S. President Barack Obama, Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen joined condemnation of the attack.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi in Kabul, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Amie Ferris-Rotman in Moscow and Louis Charbonneau in New York, Writing by Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by Alex Richardson and Peter Cooney)

    Worst attack on U.N. in Afghanistan kills at least 7, R, 1.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/01/us-afghanistan-idUSTRE7306JP20110401

U.N. council condemns

attack on U.N. in Afghanistan

UNITED NATIONS | Fri Apr 1, 2011
7:07pm EDT
Reuters
By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council condemned an attack on the U.N. compound in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Friday that left at least 12 people dead, including seven U.N. staff.

U.N. officials in New York said earlier as many as 20 U.N. staff may have been killed in the attack. But U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy told reporters the final U.N. death toll was seven.

The U.N. officials said the earlier figure had included non-U.N. Afghans demonstrating against the burning of Islam's holy book, the Koran, by an obscure American pastor.

"The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the violent attack against the United Nations operations center," Colombia's U.N. ambassador, Nestor Osorio, president of the Security Council this month, told reporters.

He added that the council "called on the government of Afghanistan to bring those responsible to justice."

The confirmed dead were three international U.N. staff and four international Gurkha guards. No Afghan nationals working for the United Nations died in the attack, although five Afghan demonstrators were among the dead, Le Roy said.

Norway's U.N. mission said on its Twitter page that Norwegian Lieutenant Colonel Siri Skare, 53, was among those killed in Mazar-i-Sharif. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt also posted a Twitter message that said a young Swedish man had been killed.

Le Roy said a Romanian was also among the dead.

'CLEARLY ARMED'

The peacekeeping chief suggested the demonstrators involved in the attack were more than protesters. Several U.N. diplomats told Reuters they suspected there were insurgents mingling among the mob that stormed the U.N. compound.

"Some of them were clearly armed," Le Roy said, adding that they appeared to have targeted the foreigners at the compound. "We are not sure at all that the U.N. was the target."

"Maybe they wanted to find an international target and the U.N. was the one in Mazar-i-Sharif," Le Roy said, adding that an investigation of the incident was still in progress.

The United Nations was temporarily evacuating staff from Mazar-i-Sharif and reviewing its security in Afghanistan, he said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in Nairobi that the attack was "outrageous and cowardly." U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said in a statement it was a "horrific and senseless attack."

The U.N. Staff Union, which represents U.N. employees worldwide, issued a statement expressing outrage at the attack.

"The Staff Union requests the Afghan authorities to investigate the incident, to take all possible measures to protect U.N. staff throughout the country and to prevent the reoccurrence of such tragic events," the union said.

The deaths came after protesters demonstrating against the burning of the Koran over-ran the U.N. compound, police said.

An Afghan police spokesman said two of the U.N. dead were beheaded by attackers who also burned parts of the compound and climbed up blast walls to topple a guard tower. Le Roy said no one was beheaded, although one victim's throat was cut.

The worst previous attack on the United Nations in Afghanistan was an insurgent assault on a Kabul guest-house where U.N. staff were staying in October 2009. Five U.N. staffers were killed and nine others wounded.

In October 2010, several militants were killed when they attempted to ambush the U.N. compound in Herat dressed in burkas worn by women.

There have been other assaults on the world body in trouble spots in the Middle East and North Africa.

A bomb attack on the U.N. compound in Algiers in December 2007 killed 17 U.N. staff. The bombing of a hotel in Baghdad in August 2003 where the U.N. mission had its headquarters took the lives of at least 22 people, including the U.N. special envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

    U.N. council condemns attack on U.N. in Afghanistan, R, 1.4.2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/01/us-afghanistan-un-deaths-idUSTRE7307SQ20110401

6 U.S. Soldiers Die in Afghanistan

April 1, 2011
The New York Times
By ROD NORDLAND

KABUL, Afghanistan — Six American soldiers have been killed in a single operation in eastern Afghanistan over the past two days, a spokesman for the international coalition said on Friday.

“I can confirm that six coalition soldiers have been identified as U.S. soldiers, and were all killed as part of the same operation, but in three separate incidents,” said Maj. Tim James. The deaths took place from late Wednesday through Thursday.

The operation, a helicopter-borne assault into a remote part of Kunar Province close to the Pakistani border, was continuing. The area is frequently used to infiltrate fighters from Pakistan. The purpose of the operation, Major. James said, was to “disrupt insurgent operations.”

    6 U.S. Soldiers Die in Afghanistan, NYT, 1.4.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/02/world/asia/02afghanistan.html